p' 



STAfiYEDROGK 



O'^'S-^Nl AN 



!J£ 







^ 



STARVED ROCK 



B Cbapter ot Colonial Ibistor^ 



EATON G. OSMAN 

Member Illinois State Historical Society 



A. FLANAGAN COMPANY 
CHICAGO 






Copyright, 1895, by E. Ci. Osman 
Cop^'right, lUll, l)y A. Flanagan Company 



PREFACE. 

I have not attempted to rewrite the history of 
the Illinois country, but only to show what was the 
part played by '' Starved Rock," or Fort St. Louis 
of the Illinois, in the great struggle of France and 
England for the possession of North America. 
This story forms an unwritten chapter of Amer- 
ican colonial history, which has been overshad- 
owed, so to say, by the comparatively insignificant 
incident (historically speaking) which gave to the 
Rock on which Fort St. Louis was placed its ex- 
pressive modern name. 

For the first time, too, in an accessible form, a 
connected chronicle has been made, as a part of the 
history of this site, of the first Christian mission 
in the Mississippi Valley, called the '^Immaculate 
Conception," a record of Christian missionary en- 
deavor and martyrdom that added lustre to the al- 
ways dramatic story of the early Roman Catholic 
missions among the Indians of North America. 

The authorities consulted are, I think, all named 
in the notes to the text, for the benefit of those stu- 
dents who care to pursue the subject to greater 
length than was here deemed advisable. 



CONTENTS 



Preface, ......... 

Introductory : Physical Characteristics, . 

The Pathfinders : Sketches of Jolliet and Marquette, 

The Discovery: The Voyage of Jolliet and Marquette. 

La Salle in Illinois : His Early Discoveries, 

A Year of Disaster : The Work of the Iroquois, 

A Year of Success : La Salle Founds His Colony, , 

Kismet : Failure and Death, ...... 

La Salle: His Dream of Empire, .... 

TONTY :......... 



The Mission : The Immaculate Conception, .... 127 

The Drama of the Eighteenth Century: The Political Problem 

of the French ......... 149 

ST.A.RVED Rock in the Eighteenth Century: The Indian Sieges, 153 
The Last of the Illinois: The Final Tragedy, . . . 171 
The Aftermath : 'The Pottawatomies, ..... 185 

Modern Starved Rock : The Era of the White Man, . . 193 
Relics: An Ancient Deed, 199 



Page 
S 
9 
15 
29 
39 
57 
69 
79 
87 
95 



INTRODUCTION. 

Caspar, how pleasantly thy pictured scenes 
Beguile the lonely hour ! I sit and gaze 
With lingering eye, till dreaming Fancy makes 
The lovely landscape live. 

— S out hey. 

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS. 

^^I have stood upon Starved Rock and gazed for 
hours upon tlie beautiful landscape spread out be- 
fore me. The undulating plains, rich in their ver- 
dure; the rounded hills beyond, clad in their forest 
livery; the gentle stream, pursuing its noiseless 
way to the Mississippi and the Gulf, all in har- 
monious association, make up a picture over which 
the eye delights to linger; and when to these are 
added recollections of the heroic adventurers who 
first occupied it; that here the banner of France 
so many 3^ears floated freely in the winds; that 
here was civilization while all around was bar- 
baric darkness,— the most intense and varied emo- 
tions cannot fail to be awakened."* 

Starved Rockf is one of the most remarkable of 
natural curiosities of the West. Once a minute is- 



*Breese: "History of Illinois." 

fThc Rock is situated in La Salle County, Illinois, near the village 
of Utica. 

9 



10 



Starved Rock 



land in the vast flood of waters that in geologic 
ages filled the present Illinois River valley — iso- 
lated now from the bluff that here bounds the Ill- 
inois Valley on the south, the Rock stands apart, 
like a nioneniental shaft, or mediaeval watch-tower, 
a solitary sandstone clift:, whose walls, carved into 




The Top of Starved Eock — Looking I^ortii.* 

form by the waters of other ages, rise one hundred 
and twenty feet above the level of the river of the 
present day. Circular in form, the summit of the 
Rock contains about half an acre of land which is 
still partially covered with the growth of ever- 
greens and oaks, such as the first white man found 
crowding its meager area, the native forest trees 

* Showing approximately one-third of the area of the Rock. 



Introduction 



11 



of prehistoric Illinois; while its sides are draped 
with vines, ferns and wild flowers and the remains 
of the cedars and pines of a former time. 

The summit is accessible only by the southern 
escarpment, where the flood-eddies of Illinois 
River heaped the sand against the base of the 




Looking East from Top of Starved Eock. 

Rock. Nature's hint has been accepted by man, 
both savage and civilized, who has cut rude steps 
in the sloping side of the Rock and thus made a 
practicable path for its ascent. This pathway has 
been used for the purpose probably since the first 
man reached the top and saw its strategic strength. 
For the Rock is a nature-made citadel, as impreg- 
nable to assault as Gibraltar; and, like many an- 



12 Starved Fock 

other feudal refuge, it lias more than once repelled 
direct attack and been captured only after starva- 
tion had slain its defenders. 

From the summit the valley of the Illinois lies 
spread out before the eye like a picture — an in- 
comparable view, limited only by the reach of hu- 
man vision. To the east the eye follows the thread 
of the river as it flows past cultivated farms and 
under the shadow of verdure-clad hills. In the 
near distance rises Buffalo Eock, in form and sub- 
stance like Starved Rock itself, but larger, its 
plateau comprising many acres; beyond which may 
be seen the ascending smoke of Ottawa's factories. 

Turning to the west, the e^^e lingers over the 
broader but more sluggish stream that steals away 
between green and fertile fields, or hides behind low 
clumps of trees, until the silvery trail is lost in the 
distance, where, just above the horizon, extending 
from bluff to bluff, over the wider expanse of river, 
hangs the great bridge of the Illinois Central Rail- 
road, which on a clear day may be seen, as a gigan- 
tic spider's cable, suspended above the river. 

Like a triumphal arch 
Erected o'er its march 
To the sea ; 

or like a screen, behind which sit the twin cities 
of La Salle and Peru. 

From the northern segment of the Rock one may 



Litroduction 13 

look across the valley and beyond the village of 
Utica to the bluff that marks its naiiow width; 
while directly at one's feet is the river. On the 
farther shore, and a mile westward, where now is 
a cultivated field, once stood the ancient La Van- 
tum of the French, the Kaskaskia of the mission- 
aries ; otherwise the chief village of the tiibes that 
once occupied the '' Illinois country" as their hunt- 
ing grounds, who made this plain their favorite and 
for many years their permanent summer home. 

The last native woodlands of the Illinois Valley 
in La Salle county are on the hillside of the south- 
ern bank of the river, which form the background 
of Starved Rock, looking toward the south. 

Such are the physical characteristics of Starved 
Rock, which in themselves have made the Rock fa- 
mous as a landmark in Illinois for centuries ; but 
the historical recollections centering here are even 
more noteworthy and in recent years have brought 
the Rock into pi'ominence as the most interesting 
spot west of the Alleghenies, associated with our 
colonial era. 




JcLCa^^Jl TTUC^y^fUAMc 



[The painting from which the picture was made was dis- 
covered by chance at Montreal, a few years ago, and 
has strong claims to probability. — Thwaites : "Father 
^larquette."] 



THE PATHFINDERS. 

In vice untaught, but skill'd where glory led 
To arduous c-nterprise. 

— Euripides. 

SKETCHES OE JOLLIET AND MARQUETTE. 

The first white men who are known to have seen 
the eminence now known as Starved Rock and the 
great Indian town of the Illinois, LaVantum, near- 
by, are Lonis JoUiet and Jacques Marquette, re- 
turning in the year 1673 from a voyage of discovery 
of the ^Mississippi. Not that they were the first 
Europeans who saw the Mississippi. More than a 
century before either was born the Spaniard Al- 
varez de Pineda (1519) had entered the river and 
another, De Soto (1541), had explored it as far as 
the Arkansas and was buried beneath its muddy 
waters. But with De Soto the exploring and col- 
onizing energy of Spain was exhausted ; and as the 
Mississippi Valley had never appealed to the Span- 
iard as a possession, amid the stress of wars at 
home that succeeded the age of Spanish explora- 
tion, even the memory of what Spanish navigators 
and explorers had seen of the northern shores of 
the Gulf of ^lexico in the sixteenth century was 
lost, and the Mississip]:>i lapsed into the unknown, 

15 



16 Starved Rock 

to be found again when in the movement of the 
world's great drama its cue was called. 

France on succeeding Spain as a world-power 
devoted her colonizing energies more especially to 
North America. Jacques Cartier as early as 1535 
explored the St. Lawrence as far as the site of 
Montreal, thus blazing the trail for Champlain 
who in 1608 founded Quebec and laid the corner- 
stone of New France, thus ^^ building the hive 
whence poured the swarm" of heroic Recollet and 
Jesuit missionaries, and the voyagetirs and cour- 
etirs de bois who scattered themselves, within the 
next thirty-five years, over the interior and i^ushed 
their examination of the continent to the farthest 
limits of the Great Lakes. The missionaries 
found the trails, and as the missions were pushed 
farther and farther westward the annual Rela- 
tions^ of the fathers seldom failed to make mention 
of a ^^ great water" still farther to the west, of 
which their Indian flocks gave them information. 

In this way the French came within '^hailing 
distance" of the Mississippi as early as 1635, when 



* From 1632 to 1673 there was published annually at Paris a little 
volume, called a "Relation," which contained an account of the far- 
spread work of this Jesuit mission to the Indians for the twelve months 
previous. It was largely made up from reports and letters sent in by 
the missionaries to their superiors at Quebec. To-day these "Re- 
lations" are of very great value to historians, for from them is ob- 
tainable what is often the only information we have of affairs in New 
France for certain periods." — Thwaites ; "Father Marquette." 



The Pathfinders 



17 



Nicolet reached Green Bay* and the Fox River of 
Wisconsin and there heard of the ^^ great water" 




Jean Talon, Intendant. 

which he supposed was the Pacific. Stilhmore 
exact information of the river was brought to Que- 



^Originally, Grande Baye, perverted by the English to Green Bay.' 



18 Starved Rock 

bee in 1660 by two young fur traders named Pierre 
Esprit Eadisson and liis brother-in-law, Medard 
Chouart, known as Sieur des Groseillers, two of 
the most daring of all the early hunter-trader-ex- 
plorers of New France. As early as 1659 they had 
penetrated the interior, sixty days' journey south- 
westward from Lake Suj)erior, and there saw a 
grand and beautiful river comparable in its ma- 
jestic proportions only to the St. Lawrence itself. 
The Relation of 1660, which recorded this discov- 
ery in a rather inconsequential way, failed to meni- 
tion the names of these adventurous traders, the 
first white men who saw the Mississippi after De 
Soto ; and so it happened that both they and their 
discovery were forgotten by the chroniclers until 
only a few years ago (1886) when Eadisson 's nar- 
rative^ written some 3^ears later than 1660, was 
found in London in the archives of the Hudson's 
Bay Company, of which he was the inspiring 
genius.* 

Such travelers' tales as these by Radisson and 
by Allouez and Dablon in the Relation of 1669-70, 
where the Mississippi is described, although it had 
not been seen by the winter, and those of still others, 
doubtless, whose names have not been recorded by 



*Agnes Laut: "Pathfinders of the West." Here the story is set 
out in detail, with an account of Radisson's earher adventures. See. 
also Brvck: '"Remarkahle Story of the Hudson's Hay Company." 



The Pathfinders 19 

any annalist, filled the minds of the French author- 
ities in Canada with the mystery of the Mississippi 
and aroused interest in the secret of its origin and 
outlet ; but no steps were taken to solve the prob- 
lem until Jean Talon, intendant, the one man of 
keenest political vision then in Canada, caught in 
these stories a gleam of French dominion in the 
West, and made haste to realize his dream pf em- 
pire by taking possession of the great western coun- 
try as ^'essential to the successful prosecution of 
the conquest of North America from the colonists 
of England and the soldiers of Spain." 

By his order, therefore, Sieur de St. Lusson, on 
June 4, 1671, at the Sault de Ste. Marie, ceremon- 
iously proclaimed the royal authority over all the 
great Northwest, Father Claude Allouez, of whom 
more will be heard later, making the harangue to 
the assembled Indians. This done, Talon set about 
finding the Mississippi and exploring the country 
through which it might flow. 

Having obtained from France the necessary 
authority, he selected as his agent for this service 
one Louis Jolliet, a young man who had witnessed 
de St. Lusson 's ceremony at the Sault, and who 
was already noted in Canada as an explorer and 
continental pathfinder. 

eTolliet, whose name, with that of Marquette, will 
forever stand near the head of the list of explorers 



20 Starved Rock 



a^PA^ 



of the Mississippi Valley, was one of the most dar- 
ing and successful of the explorers of New France. 
The second son of Jean Jolliet, whose marriage to 

Maiie d'Abancour, on 
October 9, 1639, was at- 
tended by Jean Nicolet, 
y7 then just returned from 

C/ the Wisconsin country, 

Louis was born at Quebec in 1645 and was baptised 
on September 21 of the same year, as is attested by 
the records of the church of Notre Dame de Quebec, 
still extant. His father, who had come to America 
from Sezanne in France, was a poor wagonmaker ; 
but the son, early deciding to become a ]3riest, was 
educated for that office at the Jesuit College of Que- 
bec, receiving the tonsure and the minor offices at 
the age of seventeen. He thentecamean assistant 
at the College. As a student he was skilled in pious 
learning and acquired some reputation as a polemic 
in philosophy; and it is said Talon first met the 
young man at a public discussion in philosophy in 
which both took part. Soon after this, however, 
Jolliet suddenly abandoned his career in the church 
to follow the calling of his elder brother, Adrien, a 
fur trader. He first made a trip to France, and 
then plunged into the woods, where he quickly 
obtained a reputation for courage and for success- 
ful enterprise and exploration. 



The Pathfinders 21 

In 1668 Talon sent Jolliet to Lake Sujoerior to 
find the copper mines wliicli rumor had already 
located in that region, as well as to find a better 
route to that lake than the trail via the Ottawa 
River, then in common use. This exploration was 
made in 1669. Jolliet did not find copper ; but on 
his return voyage a service rendered to certain 
Iroquois Indians, captives among the tribes of the 
lakes, put him in the way of finding a new route 
'^around the lakes," until then unknown to the 
French, via Lakes Ste. Claire and Erie; so that 
Jolliet stands in history as the discoverer and first 
white navigator of both these lakes, as wtII as of 
the Ste. Claire River, although the name Ste. Claire 
was given to the lake and river by La Salle some 
years later. Jolliet coasted the northern shore of 
Lake Erie ; and although on this first journey over 
the route, he crossed from Erie to Ontario by way 
of Grand River, he then learned of the easier pas- 
sage via Xiagara, with its short portage around the 
great cataract. 

During the years spent in the region of the Great 
Lakes, Jolliet became familiar with the numerous 
dialects of the Algonkins and their neighbors, and 
made for himself a reputation for prudence and 
judgment and the tact so necessary to carry one 
through the Indian country. Father Dablon, Su- 
perior General of the Mission of the Society of 



22 Starved Rock 

Jesus, speaks of him as a man of discretion and of 
''a courage to fear nothing where all is to be 
feared"; while in both the Jesuit and the civil re- 
ports he is spoken of as a man of unusual ability, 
' ' who might be trusted to do difficult work. ' ' Talon 
therefore selected to find the Mississippi him w^ho 
then was probably the one man in all Canada the 
best equipped for this difficult task. 

Jolliet left Quebec early in the fall of 1672 ; and 
Governor Frontenac, Talon having been recalled, 
wrote to Minister Colbert: ^^I have deemed it 
expedient for the service to send the Sieur Jolliet to 
discover the South Sea, by the Maskoutins country, 
and the great river Mississippi, which is believed 
to empty into the California Sea. He is a man of 
experience in this kind of discovery, and has al- 
ready been near the great river, of which he prom- 
ises to see the mouth." 

As was customary on all such expeditions, the ex- 
ploring party was accompanied by a priest; and 
Jolliet was directed to take with him as his mis- 
sionary chaplain the Jesuit Father Jacques Mar- 
quette, then stationed at the Ottawa Mission at St. 
Ignace, on the mainland opposite the island of 
Mackinac. The selection is said to have been made 
at Jolliet 's request; for the two young men were 
acquaintances, if not friends, and may even have 
talked over such an enterprise at the Jesuit house 



The Pathfinders 23 

at Quebec; for of course the quest of the Missis- 
sippi was then in many minds besides that of the 
Intendant Talon. It was, in fact, the geographi- 
cal problem of the time in New France, the solu- 
tion of which must have lured Jolliet, as we know a 
burning desire to see the Illinois in their own coun- 
try made this quest, when the orders came, a God- 
sent privilege to Marquette. 

Jacques Marquette is the best beloved of all the 
priestly figures concerned in the exploration of the 
Mississippi Valley. A man of most loveable dis- 
position and of the sincerest piety, he was also, as 
Father Claude Dablon wrote after his death, a man 
of '^unrivaled zeal, and angelic chastity, an incom- 
parable kindness and sweetness, a childlike candor, 
a ver}^ close union with God. ' ' 

Born at Laon, France, on June 1, 1637, he was 
the son of one of the oldest and most conspicuous 
families of that ancient and renowned city. Begin- 
ning with Vermand Marquette, a follower of Louis- 
le-Jeune (1137-1180), his ancestors were faithful 
servants of the King, holding intimate relations to 
the person of the Crown as well as important com- 
missions in the royal service and recipients of the 
Yoyai favor at frequent intervals for five hundred 
years. Nicolas Marquette, the father of Jacques, 
was himself an eminent civil magistrate who suf- 
fered temporary loss of his wealth and banishment 



24 Starved Rock 

from his native town because of his loyalty to 
Henry lY. (1587-1610) during the latter 's contest 
with the League, a fidelity that was richly rewarded 
when Henry's cause proved triumphant. Consid- 
ering the marked fidelity and attachment of the 
Marquettes to the Crown, it is not a little remark- 
able that no less than four members of this royalist 
famih^ should have served in the French army in 
America during our struggle against George of 
England and that three of them should have laid 
down their lives in that generous service. The 
fourth, who served uinder Washington, returned to 
Laon, where he died in 1811.* 

The Marquettes were churchmen of course ; but 
the piety of Jacques was inherited from his mother, 
the gentle Rose de la Salle, whose ancestor, the 
noted Jean Baptiste de la Salle, had founded the 
Order of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, 
which, anticipating by many generations the mod- 
ern free school system, gave free instruction to 
thousands of poor boys of France. After Mar- 
quette's death, his sister Francoise, in 1685, 
founded a similar order, the Marquette Sisters, 
which still exists under the name of the Sisters of 
the Providence of Laon. 

Jacques Marquette was the youngest of a fam- 
ily of six children. Although, as we have seen, he 

*Thwaites: "Father Marquette," Ch. I. 



Tlie Patlifiuders 25 

came of the warrior and governing class, the gentle 
hearted youth, doubtless through the influence of 
his mother, elected to become a priest and a Jesuit 
missionary. For this office he was educated at the 
neighboring city of Nancy, where in 1654 we And 
him, at seventeen, entered as a novice. On com- 
pleting his studies he became a teacher, notably at 
Reimes, Charleville and Langres. 

But so zealous a soul, impatient always for the 
day when he should be called to devote himself to 
the toil and the suffering and the self-sacrifice of 
the foreign missionary, could not but welcome the 
chance to take part in the heroic and dangerous 
service and to share in the martyrdom of the Jesuit 
Fathers then carrying on in North America ^^one 
of the most remarkable missionary enterprises in 
all history,"* the story of which was being told from 
vear to vear in the annual Relations sent to Paris 
by the fathers superior resident in America. He 
bided his time in patience, and at length in 1666 
received the welcome order to proceed to New 
France to prepare for the work of a forest mis- 
sionary. 

Marquette arrived at Quebec on September 20, 
1666, after a long voyage, at an era of Atlantic nav- 
igation when even the quickest passage was an ex- 
perience but little short of physical martyrdom; 

* Thwaites : "Father Marquette." 



26 Starved Rock 

3'et after but twenty days of rest lie was sent by 
the Father Superior, Frangois le Mercier, to Three 
Rivers *'to be the pu^^il of Father Diiiilletts in the 
Montagnais language." Here during the succeed- 
ing two years, in spite of the all but insurmountable 
difficulties of Indian languages, Marquette is said 
to have completely mastered no less than six root 
tongues, with most of their dialects. It was a won- 
derful feat of linguistic acquisition and distin- 
guishes him as the man of his time having the 
greatest command of Indian languages in the 
Northwest. 

From Three Rivers he went (1668) to Sault de 
Ste. Marie, to the Ottawa Mission, where with 
Father Dablon, his superior, he built a church. 
In 1669 he was sent to La Pointe, on Chequamegon 
Bay, Lake Superior, succeeding Father Allouez. 
Here he met members of the Illinois tribes, who 
went there to trade and who told him of their own 
country as well as of the ^' Great River." The 
missionary's was an all but hopeless task there; 
and Indian wars, in which the Sioux appeared, 
soon drove him back to Mackinac (1671), whence 
he was transferred to St. Ignace, on the mainland 
opposite. Here he built a chapel, ^^the first sylvan 
shrine to Catholicity at MackinaAv,"* and in this 
laborious post the pious priest found need for all 



*Shea: "Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley." 



The Pathfinders 27 

bis patience and christian fortitude. Yet he was 
happy, though sutf ering all conceivable bodily dis- 
comfort and mental anxiety, if as opportunity of- 
fered he might but have the blessed privilege of 
opening by the baptismal sacrament ' ' the doors of 
bliss to the dying infant or more aged repenting 
sinner." Here he remained until summoned 
(1672) to join Jolliet in the discovery and explora- 
tion of the Mississippi. 



THE DISCOVEEY. 

Oh, Jolliet, what splendid taery dream 
Met thy regard, when on that mighty stream, 
Bursting upon its lonely unknown flow. 
Thy keel historic cleft its golden tide : — 
Blossomed thy lips with what stern smile of pride? 
What conquering light shone on thy lofty brow ? 

— Frechette * 

A'OYAGE OF JOLLIET AND MARQUETTE. 

Jolliet arrived at Point St. Ignace from Quebec 
on December 8, 1672, at the opening of the northern 
winter. Father Marquette welcomed both him and 
his instructions. ^'The day of the Immaculate 
Conception of the Holy Virgin whom I had contin- 
ually invoked since coming to the country of the 
Ottawas, to obtain from God the favor of being 
enabled to visit the nations on the river Mississippi 
—this very day was precisely that on which M. 
Jolliet arrived with orders to go with him on this 
discovery," he writes in his journal of this memor- 
able voyage. ^^I was all the more delighted with 
this news because I saw my plans about to be ac- 
complished, and found myself in the happy neces- 
sity of exposing my life for the salvation of all 
those tribes, especially the Illinois, who, when I 



Translated by W. W. Campbell, F.R.S.C, for "The Story of Canada." 

29 



30 Starved Rock 

was at St. Esprit, had ))egged me very earnestly to 
bring the word of God among them. ' ' 

During the long winter the two young men made 
every possible preparation for their voyage, by 
enquiry concerning the country of the savages 
who made Mackinaw a rendezvous during the win- 
ter months. ^^ Because we were going to seek un- 
known countries we took every precaution in our 
power, so that if our undertaking were hazardous it 
should not be foolhardy. To that end," he writes, 
^*we obtained all the information we could from 
the savages who frequented these regions ; and we 
even traced out from their report a map of the 
whole of that new country. ' ' 

On May 17, 1673, the explorers set out from St. 
Ignace, accompanied by five voyageurs, all in two 
birch-bark canoes. For the voyage they carried 
Indian corn and some jerked meat, as well as suit- 
able goods as presents to the natives they ex- 
pected to meet on the way. ^^At the outset Mar- 
quette placed the enterprise under the patronage 
of the Immaculate Virgin, promising that if she 
granted them success, the river should be named 
^The Conception.' This pledge he strove to keep; 
but an Indian word, the very meaning of which has 
been disputed, is its designation.''* 

Coasting along the shore of Lake Michigan until 



* Hinsdale : "The Old Northwest. 



The Discovery 31 

they reached Green Bay, they entered that body 
of water and came at length to Fox River, *^the 
joy that we felt at being selected for this expedi- 
tion animating our courage and rendering the work 
of paddling from morning to night agreeable to 
us," writes Marquette. 

Ascending Fox River to the portage to the Wis- 
consin, which they knew would lead them to the 
^^ Great River," they followed the latter stream un- 
til on June 17, a month to a day from Mackinaw, 
the expanse of the Mississippi burst upon their 
view. They gazed enraptured— ^^a joy that I can- 
not exjjress," wrote Marquette. Not forgetting the 
haughty man at Quebec, ^^ whose fortunes he felt 
he was bearing," Jolliet named the river ^^La 
Baude," in recognition of Frontenac's family; but 
Marquette, with devotion to the great dogma of 
his church and with reverence for his vow, named 
it ^^The Conception," ^Svith something of the 
fervor which had warmed the Spaniard who a cen- 
tury and a half before, had bestowed upon it at 
its mouth the name of the ^^Holy Spirit."* En- 
raptured though they were, not even the boldest 
flight of their imaginations measured the greatness 
of the valley they had opened to European gaze 
or was adequate to express the vastness of the 

'■' W^ixsoK : "Cartier to Frontenac." Marquette also records the fact 
that the Indians called the river "Missipi." 



32 Starved Rock 

territorial empire they were that day adding to the 
possessions of France. 

Descending the great river was an easy task; 
and Marquette's journal becomes a moving tale, 
in which all the magnificence of the country in 
the livery of primeval nature, seen in the glory of 
mid-summer, is noted by the historian of the ex- 
pedition ; but it is not necessary here to follow the 
exi^lorers as they continued that portion of their 
journey. Having on July 17 reached a point below 
the mouth of the Arkansas River, and having satis- 
fied themselves that the river did not flow to the 
*'Sea of Virginia" or into the ^'California Sea," 
but to the Gulf of Mexico, they turned their canoes 
toward Canada and home. 

When they reached the mouth of the Illinois 
(Riviere de Divine)*, having been assured by the 
Indians that here was the shorter and more direct 
rovite to the Lac des Illinois, they entered and fol- 
lowed it to the northeast, delighted with the stream 
and the country it w^atered. "Vs^e had never seen 
anything like this river," writes Marquette, ''for 
the richness of the soil, the prairies and woods, the 
l)uff aloes, the elks, the deer, the wild cats, the bus- 
tards, the wild geese, the ducks, the paroquets and 



* JolHet gave the Illinois the name Divine, or Outrelaise, in compli- 
ment, it is supposed, to Frontenac's wife, noted for her beauty, and 
Mile. Outrelaise. her fascinating friend, who were called in court 
circles les divines. — Winsor: "Cartier to Frontenac." 



The Discovery 



33 



even the beavers. It is made up of little lakes and 
little rivers. That upon which we voyaged is wide, 
deep and gentle for sixty-five leagues." 




Marquette '8 Genuine Map. 

In ascending the Illinois Marquette records one 
stop, made with the Peorias, an Illinois tribe, the 
location not being mentioned ; but he says he there 
"baptized a dying infant a little while before it 



34 Starved Rock 

died, by an admirable providence, for the salva- 
tion of its innocent soul," the tender record of 
undoubtedly the first baptism in Illinois if not in 
the Mississippi Valley. Higher up the stream the 
explorers came to the village of the Illinois, called 
the Kaskaskias, containing seventy-four cabins, 
where, says Marquette, they were kindly received 
by the inhabitants who ^^ compelled me to promise 
to return and instruct them." 

This village was located on the north bank of 
the Illinois River about a mile west, below Starved 
Rock ; so that Marquette 's record is the first men- 
tion in history of a site closely allied to the story 
of Starved Rock and that supplies a peculiarly in- 
teresting chapter of the annals of the Church in 
Illinois. 

The discoverers remained at Kaskaskia but three 
days, and then one of the chiefs with his young men 
escorted them to the lake, via the Chicago portage,* 
whence they pushed on toward Green Bay. Where 
now is the canal uniting Green Bay with Lake 
Michigan was then a portage, which gave the 
travelers access to the present Sturgeon Bay, on 
whose waters they found easy paddling to the last 
rapids of Fox River and the mission of St. Pran- 



* The historians are inclined to say their route was via the Des- 
plaines River rather than by the Calumet, chiefly for the reason that in 
returning to the Illinois in 1674, Marquette took the former route. 



The Discovery 



35 



cois Xavier, where, at the end of September, they 
found friends and rest, after having traversed in 
canoes a distance of something like twenty-five 
hundred miles. 

Having been transferred during his absence on 




Jolliet's Map of the Illinois.* 

the Illinois to the St. Francois Xavier Mission 
(now DePere, AYis.), Marquette at the end of his 
long journey was at home. The season being too 
far advanced to proceed to Quebec, Jolliet also 



*Jolliet's Map is reduced from a reproduction in Winsor: ''(^artier 
to Frontenac." 



36 Starved Rock 

tarried there, utilizing the delay by preparing his 
report and enjoying his rest, while taking part 
also in the activities going on always in connec- 
tion with a forest mission. Marquette's weaker 
constitution was so seriously impaired by the fa- 
tigues of the exploration that he never afterward 
became a well man. He performed, indeed, all the 
duties of his priestly office, but illness followed him 
so relentlessly that it was not until the following 
year he was able to complete his report and send 
it to his Father Superior, Dablon, at Quebec. 

Jolliet reached Quebec to report to the Governor 
in August, 1674 ; but when within sight of Montreal 
his canoe was overturned in the rapids of St. Louis 
and his box of papers, together with his maps and 
all the collections of his journey were lost, while he 
himself was saved only after having lost conscious- 
ness in the water. Two of his companions were 
drowned. It is due to this accident that the report 
of Marquette to Father Dablon became the history 
of the discovery of the Mississippi, rather than that 
of Jolliet, chief of the expedition. Transmitted by 
Dablon to Paris, IMarquette's narrative was pub- 
lished in an abridged and altered form by Thevenot 
in 1681, accompanied by a map purported to have 
been made. by Marquette; and thus by force of 
circumstances Marquette's name was given a prom- 
inence as the apparent leader of a voyage of dis- 



The Disco venj . 37 

covery, that lie himself least of all expected or 
would have desired at the expense of his friend 
and fellow traA^eler, Jolliet, who w^as the official 
head of the adventure. 

On reaching Quebec Jolliet made a verbal report 
of his discovery to Governor Frontenac. This re- 
l)ort the latter at once sent to Colbert, accompanied 
l)y his personal estimate of the extent and char- 
acter as well as the importance of the discovery. 
This statement remained buried in French archives 
until the middle of the last century, when it was 
first published in Vol. IX of the New York Colonial 
Documents. Jolliet further addressed a report to 
Frontenac, descriptive of the flora and fauna and 
the natural features of the lands he had seen in the 
West ; but this document also w^as hidden from the 
public until 1872 when it was first published."^ 

The great discovery by Jolliet and IMarquette 
did not at first prompt the French to any schemes 



* Jolliet's subsequent career was, of course, an active and useful one. 
In 1G75 he married Francoise Bissot, daughter of a rich merchant, who 
became the mother of JoUiet's three sons and four daughters. Four 
years later he applied for a trading concession in the "Illinois country," 
but it was refused by the court at Paris, on the ground that such a 
project was not then advisable. At another time we find him nobly 
protesting against the sale of liquor to the Indians, which he character- 
ized as a crime that should be punished with death. Again, as ad- 
ministrator of his father-in-law Bissot's estate, he visited the Hudson 
Bay country, reporting on his return that he had found the English 
established there, and recommending that if they were not at once 
ejected the trade of France would be ruined. 

It was n(it until about 1079 that the official recognition long his due 



38 Starved Each 

for planting colonies in the rich country of the 
Mississippi Valley, and a plan of settlement pro- 
posed by Jolliet was rejected by the Court as 
premature. It was only when the activity of the 
English in New York menaced the French fur 
trade that the struggle for dominion in the Missis- 
sippi Valley and the career of La Salle began. 



came to Jolliet. In that year he was granted possession of the 
Mingan Islands, along the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
to which in 1680 was added the island of Anticosti, the deed to the 
latter grant expressly stating that the concession was made in recogni- 
tion of Jolliet's great services in the West. Jolliet proceeded with his 
family to Anticosti where he built a warehouse and settled down to 
trade and to engage in the fisheries. Being a hydrographer also he 
made a chart of the St. Lawrence River. In 1689 he was sent to 
]\Lickinac, on order of Frontenac, on behalf of the Jesuits, to an- 
nounce to Durantaye, the commandant, that the Hurons, Ottawas, and 
other tribes were treating with the Iroquois and had sent back their 
prisoners and were preparing to join the Iroquois and the English 
with their warriors to act against the French. (Le Clero : "First 
Establishment of the Faith in New France.") His family continued to 
reside at Anticosti until in 1690 his property was burned and his wife 
and her mother taken prisoners by Sir William Phipps, when the latter 
was on his way to unsuccessfully attack Quebec. 

Still later Jolliet was sent to explore the coast of Labrador, which 
he did in 1694, acting as official hydrographer in succession to Franque- 
lin. On April 30, 1697, he was granted a seignory oh the River 
Chaudiere, still called by his name ; and there he died in the year 1700, 
leaving behind him a family whose posterity still honor his" name and 
look with pride to him as their ancestor. 

Jolliet was assuredly one of the most daring of the explorers of the 
West, an industrious and honest man but not a very strong character, 
perhaps. As we have seen, he was one whom circumstances con- 
tributed to deprive for a time of a material reward and for a longer 
period of his just fame as the finder of the Mississippi instead of the 
mere follower of the priest, the saintly Marquette, who would have 
been the last of men to seek so great renown for himself at the 
expense of his friend, and who would have deerned a commission to 
tind the "great river" or to found an empire a slight honor compared 
with an order to risk all to preach the Gospel to the Illinois. 



LA SALLE IN ILLINOIS. 



Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore 
I make some coast alluring, some lone isle. 
To distant men who must go there or die. 

— Emerson. 



LA SALLE S EARLY DISCOVERIES. 

After Champlain the greatest name in the his- 
tory of French exploration in North America is 
that of Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, or, 
more simply. La Salle, as he will be known for all 
time. Born at Rouen in 1643, like many another 
man of his century whose name has become linked 
with the fate of the French church or state in New 
France, La Salle came from a family of rich burgh- 
ers and merchants who lived like princes rather 
than as men of the people. He was liberally edu- 
cated and became especially proficient in mathe- 
matics. An earnest Catholic and a serious youth, 
he early was fascinated by that magnificent organ- 
ism, the Society of Jesus, and for a time he was 
connected with the order. But in the very nature of 
things so independent a spirit as La Salle could not 
long endure what to him must have been the chafing 
discipline of the Society nor submit to the abnega- 
tion of self which that discipline required and com- 

39 




[This picture is made from a photograph of the original painting 
by G. P. A. Healey for the Chicago Historical Society, by whose 
courtesy it is here published. The portrait is that of La Salle ap- 
pearing in the plate printed in the chapter with the caption "Kis- 
met." entitled'The Murther of Mons'r de La Salle." It was published 
by Alargry in his "JMemoires et Documents," etc., without com- 
ment, and is of questionable value as a portrait, although quite gen- 
erally now accepted as such.] 



L(i Sdlh ill llUiiois 41 

pellet! ; and t^^o lie withdrew, honorably and on good 
terms, we may be sure, but withal retaining there- 
after an inveterate disliive for and distrust of the 
Society and its members. 

This connection having under the law of the time 
deprived him of his share of his father's estate, he 
was «iven an allowance bv the f amilv of a few hun- 
dred francs annually, the capital of which was paid 
to him in 1666 : and with this meagre pittance he 
came to Xorth America, at the age of twenty-three. 
Although he obtained from the Seminary of St. 
Sulpice of Montreal a grant of land on Montreal 
Island at a place now called La Chine," and there 
set up as a sort of feudal lord and trader, in the 
most dangerous si30t for a Frenchman in Xorth 
xVmerica, there is good reason for believing that he 
had other and more far reaching projects in mind, 
and that the La Chine establishment was but a 
means to a greater end : and when a band of Sene- 
ca s, his guests one winter, told him of a river called 
the Oyo (Ohio) that rose in their country and at a 
distance of eight moons" journey emptied into the 
sea, ^'his hour had come.'' In order to tinance 
the exiDedition which this information suggested. 
the first step doubtless in the career he had mapi^ed 
out for himself before leaving- France, he sold his 



* In derision of La Salle, who later failed as an explorer to solve 
the geographical problem of all western exploration — the western route 
to China. 



42 Starved Bock 

improvements at La Chine to the Seminary, and 
having obtained official authority therefor from 
Governor Courcelle, and being encouraged thereto 
by the Intendant Talon, he started in 1669 A^ith 
four canoes and fourteen men in search of the Ohio. 
With this journey this narrative has no special 
concern. In relation to it, the curious reader is 
referred to Parkmax: ^' La Salle and the Dis- 
covery of the G reat West, ' ' and to Winsor : ' ' Car- 
tier to Frontenac." That La Salle discovered and 
explored the Ohio, at least to the falls of Louisville, 
is not now doubted; for France repeatedly based 
her claim to possession of the interior of the con- 
tinent upon that discovery ; but where else La Salle 
was during the two years of his absence is not so 
clear. It is claimed that during this time he saw 
both the Mississix)pi and the Illinois as well as the 
Ohio; but all is uncertain. Parkman concludes 
that the evidence does not support a claim to the 
discovery of the Mississippi, and La Salle himself 
never made such a claim; but Parkman says La 
Salle ^^ discovered the Ohio and in all probability 
the Illinois also."* At any rate, in all his sub- 
sequent movements in the Illinois country La Salle 
showed perfect familiarity with the geography of 
both Lake Michi^'an and the water routes from the 
lake to the Illinois River itself, even before Jol- 



* Parkman : "La Salle and the Discoverv of the Great West.' 



La Salle in Illinois 43 

liet's and Marquette's discoveries had become gen- 
erally known. 

La Salle returned to Canada in 1671 or 1672 and 
attached himself to the fortunes of Governor Fron- 
tenac, waiting until the time was ripe for the de- 
velopment of his plan. 

This was so daring in conception and so far 
reaching in its political scope, that one can readily 
see how La Salle might acquire a reputation, as 
he did, as a visionary, when he talked of seizing 
an unexplored continent in order to antici- 
pate its appropriation by another people with 
whom the French in Canada had thus far come in 
contact only indirectly, as the almoners of the 
Iroquois. Frontenac was a statesman. At least, 
he could see, as Talon had seen before him, the 
political wisdom of La Salle's design, which was 
no less than to reach the mouth of the Mississippi 
via the Illinois (for the Iroquois had closed the 
route via Chatauqua, French Creek and the Alle- 
gheny to the Ohio, also a less feasible waterway 
than the Illinois) and take verbal possession of the 
country. Then by closing the mouth of the river 
with a fort and by placing others along the route 
from Montreal to the Gulf, he could hold the in- 
terior against all invaders and thus add the greater 
part of the continent to the possessions of Louis 
XIY. in America. Eventuallv the center of 



44 Starved Bod' 

French dumiiiion in North America could be trans- 
ferred from the then bleak and inhospitable Can- 
ada to the fertile rallev of the Mississippi, which 
b}^ agriculture and trade would sooner or later be- 
come the seat of a flourishing people. It was a 
grand and eminently practicable conception which 
not many years after La Salle's death became 
the policy of the Paris government, with what 
success the history of the Franco-English struggle 
in America in the eighteenth century tells us. 

Eeturning to France in 1674 La Salle unfolded 
his great project at the court of Louis the Magni- 
ficent. He found ready listeners and was meas- 
urably successful. As a reward for his discovery 
of the Ohio, La Salle was ennobled ; and by the elo- 
quence of his pleading for his great project, he ob- 
tained possession of Fort Frontenac as well as 
liberal grants of lands adjoining, together with ex- 
clusive trading privileges both on Lake Ontario 
and in the new lands of the Illinois country which 
he was to explore and settle. All was to be done at 
his own individual expense, however. 

Having established himself at Fort Frontenac 
(now Kingston, Ont), La Salle began his work 
of exploration and settlement of the West by build- 
ing Fort Conti on Niagara River to control that 
portage; after which, in the summer of 1679 he 
built the Griffin, a vessel of forty-five tons burden, 



La Salle in Illinois 



45 



the first of the vessels to engage in what has since 
become the vast commerce of the Great Lalvcs. In 
this vessel on August 7, 1679, he set sail for Mich- 
ilimackinac and Green Bay. At the first named 
place he established a trading post and left his 




The Griffin.* 



lieutenant, Henri de Tonty and about twenty men, 
with instructions to proceed along the eastern shore 
of Lake Michigan to the mouth of the St. Joseph 



* The Griffin was built on Little Niagara River, at a point just 
beyond the bend of the river above La Salle, N. Y. It was between 
45 and 60 tons burden; and the correct rig of the vessel was prob- 
ably substantially that of the picture, which was made by R. P. Joy 
of Detroit, who found the original in a French book attributed to 
Hennepin, published in 1711. At least, the rig is historically cor- 
rect, being the prevailing one of the period (1679). 



46 Starved Bach' 

River, while he himself proceeded to Green Bay. 
Having there taken on a load of furs, he ordered 
the Griffin to proceed to Niagara to unload her rich 
cargo and then to return with supplies to the St. 
Joseph River, while he himself proceeded along 
the west shore to the same place with fourteen men, 
including Father Louis Hennepin and two friars, 
Zenobius Membre and Gabriel Ribourde: for La 
Salle, a zealous Catholic, although no friend of the 
Jesuits, was always accompanied by holy fathers, 
among whom he had no more admiring and faith- 
ful friend than Father ^lembre. 

La Salle reached the mouth of the St. Joseph 
River in Xovember, in advance of Tonty: and 
while waiting for the latter and his party to come 
up, he occupied his men, who were anxious to pro- 
ceed before winter set in, by building here a fort 
and station buildings, which he called Fort Miami. 
He thus secured and fortified the key to the Illinois 
via the Kankakee and placed the third of his 
chain of forts between Fort Frontenac and the 
mouth of the ^Mississippi. On Xovember 12 Tonty 
arrived, bringing, however, only half of his origi- 
nal party and the ominous news that the Griffin had 
not reached Mackinac and had not been heard of 
after leaving Green Bay. And La Salle waited 
with dark forbodings in his heart. 

At length, no Griffin appearing, nor any of 



La Salle in Illinois 47 

Tonty's stragglers and further delay being impos- 
sible. La SaUe attaelied to trees wi*itten instructions 
to the pilot of the Griffin, in the event of his ar- 
rival: and on December 3, with twenty-nine 
Frenchmen and LeLoup. a Mohegan himter, set 
out for the Illinois and the Mississippi. At about 
seventy miles above the foil, near the site of the 
present city of South Bend. Ind.. they foimd the 
portage from the St. Joseph to the Kankakee 
(TheakLki"! River, and on December 6 floated their 
canoes on this branch of the Illinois and so entered 
the valley of the Mississippi. The journey was a 
dreary and painful one. Ice impeded their prog- 
ress thix>ugli a coimtry that everywhere for miles 
was a half-frozen mai-shy wilderness, rai'ely af- 
fording comfortable camping gi'oimds. while the 
autimmal prairie tires of the Indians had driven 
away the game : so that subsistence itself was a dif- 
ficult problem. After some days they reached the 
more elevated prairie of the Illinois coimtiy and 
the open river : and when their disti'ess from him- 
ger was most acute, a buffalo mired on the shore 
was killed, and food was again plenty. 

By this time they had reached the jimction with 
the Desplaines and were on the broad and open 
river, with easy paddling imtil they came to the 
grand rapids of the Illinois l>etween the present 
town of Mai^eilles and the citv of Ottawa. Then 



48 Starved Rock 

they passed the mouth of Fox Eiver, called by 
the Indians Pesticoui, coming soon after to the 
isolated and striking plateau now called Buffalo 
Rock, a few miles beyond which, having passed the 
'Mone cliff" now called Starved Rock, they reached 
the untenanted huts constituting the village home 
of the Kaskaskias, where in 1675 Father Marquette 
had planted his mission to the Illinois and which 
Father Allouez, his successor, had abandoned when 
he heard of La Salle's approach, attaching him- 
self to wandering bands of Miamis and other sav- 
ages during their winter hunting. 

This village of the Kaskaskia tribe of the Illinois, 
called by the French La Yantuni, lay at the edge 
of a marshy plain upon the right (north) bank of 
the Illinois River, about a mile to the south and 
half a mile west of the present village of L^tica. 
Hennepin says there were in the village at that time 
four hundred and sixty lodges, arranged in rows 
and built like long narrow arbors, with their sides 
and roofs co^'ered with thick double mats of rushes 
to keep out the wind and the weather. Each hut, 
or lodge, had five or six fires, each fire serving for 
one or two families, thus indicating a population 
of foui' to five thousand souls.* 



* AUouez in 1GT7 found but 351 lodges. Marquette in 107.") records 
that he there addressed 500 chiefs and 1,500 young men and also women 
and children. Father Membre in 1680 says the population was 7.000 
to 8.000. Franquelin, 1084, says abtmt 0.000. 



La Salle ui Illinois 49 

It was now the end of the year, approaching mid- 
winter, and the tribes had gone to their winter 
hunting grounds. A search of the viHage revealed 
the corn caches, or covered storage pits : and urged 
by his gi-eat need therefor. La Salle took a few 
bushels of corn, although he well knew that in do- 
ing so he would give deep offense. He left pres- 
ents, however, in compensation, and hoped to make 
amends otherwise when he should meet the owners. 

Ou Xew Year's Day. 16S0. Father Hennepin 
having said mass and in an address extended to all 
the good wishes of the day. '-(jf^^^^ je pus/' La Salle 
resmned his journey. After four days they came 
to the body of water now known as Peoria Lake, 
called by the Indians Pinnteom ("a place of many 
fat beasts"'), near the lower end of which they 
found an encampment of eighty lodges of the Ill- 
inois. The Indians were taken by surprise and 
thrown into a panic by the arrival of the French, 
and hastily prepared for defense. La Salle and his 
men boldly landed at once, but passively awaited 
the event. When the Indians saw there was no 
disposition on the part of La Salle to attack them, 
they offered the cahmiet of peace, to which La Salle 
responded promptly : and soon, with the friars' aid, 
confidence was restored and Indian hospitality of- 
fered and accepted. Presents were distributed and 
apology made for the violation of the village caches. 



50 Starved Rock 

Then La Salle stated his intention to erect a fort 
among them and to make a *'big canoe" to descend 
to the sea. He expressed also. his. desire to trade 
with them and to protect them from the Iroquois. 
The Illinois were pleased with all this ; and ^^ feasts 
and dances consumed the day."* 

The sinister influences, however, that seemed 
everywhere and at all times to hedge La Salle 
about were felt even here and at once ; for this day, 
that promised so well, had not ended before a Mas- 
coutin chief named Monso appeared with several 
attendants bearing presents for the Illinois; and 
in an all-night harangue, laden with insinuations, 
roused the suspicions of the Illinois. Finally he 
openly denounced La Salle as a spy and partisan of 
the Iroquois. In this attack La Salle believed he 
saw the instigations of Allouez the Jesuit, who was 
in the neighborhood; but by his natural skill in 
finesse, aided by his knowledge of Indian char- 
acter, he was able to restore himself to the confi- 
dence of the Illinois. He succeeded less with his 
own men, however; for he had hardly foiled his 
enemies among the savages than six of his party 
deserted him in the night and fled into the wilder- 
ness. This defection was a serious and alarming 
blow to La Salle, but with characteristic fortitude 
and assurance he proceeded with his work. 

* Parkman : "La Salle," etc. ; Mason : "The Land of the Illinois." 



La Salle in Illinois 51 

Separating his men from the Indian camp, on 
January 15 he began building a fort on a low hill on 
the left bank of the river some two and a half miles 
below its outlet from the lake. Within this en- 
closure he erected his storehouse, set up a forge 
and made habitations for his men, thus completing 
the fourth link in his chain of forts, or stations, be- 
tween Fort Frontenac and the Gulf and making 
the first establishment of white men in the Missis- 
sippi Yalley. This fort he called Crevecoeur 
(^'broken heart"), a name whose significance in 
this instance is open to various interpretations. 

The fort completed, La Salle began work on the 
vessel in which he intended to descend the Missis- 
sippi. He himself and two others, volunteers (for 
his sawyers were among the deserters) , began cut- 
ting the planks, and by March 1 the keel of a vessel 
forty-two feet long and twelve feet of beam was 
laid. But as the craft would be without iron, cor- 
dage or sails, of which the loss of the Griffin had 
deprived him, La Salle undertook to go himself to 
Canada for these necessary articles. 

In the meantime La Salle had become interested 
in the Sioux and other Indians of the Northwest, 
some of whom had wintered near him on the Ill- 
inois ; and he determined to send a party to explore 
their country. He selected for this expedition two 
of his best and most faithful men,— one Michael 



52 Starved Rock 

Ako (or Accau, or Accault, the name is variously 
spelled), a native of Poitou, whose name appears 
several times in the annals of this neighborhood, 
and Antony Auguel. Ako he appointed as leader, 
and to him he committed a quantity of goods for 
trade, and directed Father Henne^Din to accom- 
pany him on a journey which the Priest's own 
narrative has made famous. This expedition left 
Crevecoeur on February 29, 1680; and on the fol- 
lowing day. La Salle, accompanied by six white 
men and his Mohegan hunter, set out for his fort at 
Frontenac, leaving Tonty in command of the re- 
mainder of his men at the fort. 

The journey was one of exhausting labor and 
most intense bodily discomfort. The ice still cov- 
ered the river and the flat, marshy valley for long 
stretches, making it necessary to haul the canoes 
on sleds; and there was almost continuous rain, 
with sleet and snow, that delayed them for days to- 
gether. When a welcome frost came, covering the 
country with ice, they travelled rapidly on snow- 
shoes, and by March 10 they again came to the 
deserted Indian town they had left behind them on 
January 1. Here for several days they rested in 
the empty lodges. Here too La Salle met the Illi- 
nois chief Chassagoac, with whom he bargained for 
a canoe load of corn from the caches, which he sent 
by two of his men to Tonty. La Salle took further 



La Salle in Illinois 53 

advantage of this meeting with the Illinois chief 
to unfold to the friendly savage his plans of trade, 
in which Chassagoac saw much of advantage to his 
people. He thereupon pledged his intluence and 
aid in behalf of the Frenchmen, while La Salle in 
turn promised to use his good offices to bring about 
a lasting peace with the Iroquois, those inveterate 
scourges of the Western wilderness and of the 
Illinois in particular. 

It was. at this time that La Salle 's attention was 
especially drawn to the isolated sandstone cliff 
standing on the left bank of the river about a mile 
above the Kaskaskia village, which he had noticed 
a few weeks before. Impressed by its natural 
strength and by its proximity to the permanent 
village of the Illinois, he resolved to change his 
base from Crevecoeur to this place; and when on 
March 24 he reached his Fort Miami and found 
there La Chapelle and Le Blanc, two men whom 
he had in November sent to Mackinac in search of 
the Griffin, he ordered them to join Tonty at 
Crevecoeur, carrying letters directing Tonty to ex- 
amine the Rock (LeRocher), and, if he thought 
best, to abandon the lower fort and build one upon 
the Rock.^ The Rock was admirably adapted for 



"''• The late Edward G. Mason, "Chapters from Illinois History." 
p. SI, says: "The new site was not the bold blnff . . . known in 
our time as Starved Rock. At this period the s^eat Indian village was 
some eight miles above this point, and the high rock in its [the vil- 



54 Starved Rock 

La Salle's purpose. In the hands of a few men, it 
commanded, as could no other place along the en- 
tire river, this waterway for all travel from the 
Lakes to the Mississippi, and in addition to being 
in the midst of a fertile country, it overlooked the 
great Indian town which would be the center of an 
immense Indian trade. 

Quitting Fort Miami, La Salle and his men 
plunged into the sodden and terrifying wilderness 
of southern Michigan to make his way to Niagara. 
The journey to Lake Erie was one of the most des- 
perate character. The land was drowned in the 
floods of the spring *^ break up," and signs of hos- 
tile Indians were so numerous that fires were al- 
ways hazardous. In a few days, of the party of six 
only La Salle and the JMohegan were in traveling 
condition ; so that when at last they reached Detroit 
River La Salle sent two of them, those in the worst 
physical condition, to Mackinac as the nearest 
refuge, while with the others he pressed on to his 
own post at Niagara. On Easter Monday he landed 
at this station, at or near the spot where they had 
built the Griffin. Leaving here his exhausted 
followers, and taking with him three fresh men, 



lage's?] neighborhood referred to by La Salle was probably that 
known today as Buffalo Rock, or one of the bluffs near it." This 
is a revival of the blunder ot' Sparks; and the statement of Mr. Mason 
is itself the best of evidence that Mr. Mason could never have made a 
personal examination of the localities in question, as his knowledge of 
the topography is quite inexact. 



La Salle in Illinois 55 

La Salle resumed his journey, and on May 6, hav- 
ing crossed Ontario in a torrent of rain, he entered 
the familiar gates of his own Fort Frontenac. 
^^ During sixty-five days he had toiled almost inces- 
santl}^, traveling by the course he took about a 
thousand miles through a country beset with every 
form of peril and obstruction; ^the most arduous 
journey,' says the chronicler, ^ever made by 
Frenchmen in America.' Such was the Cavelier 
de la Salle. In him an unconquerable mind held 
at its service a frame of iron and tested' it to the 
utmost of its endurance. The pioneer of western 
pioneers was no rude son of toil, but a man of 
thought, trained amid arts and letters."* 



* Parkman : "La Salle," etc. 



A YEAR OF DISASTER. 

The oxen were plowing 
and the asses feeding beside them 
and the Sabeans fell upon them 
and took them away. 

—Job. 

THE AVORK OF THE IROQUOIS. 

Within the walls of Fort Frontenac La Salle was 
at home ; but he was not at rest, either mentally or 
physically. At his Niagara fort he had faced the 
fact he may have refused to admit, that the Griffin 
was lost irretrievably, with its rich cargo of furs. 
He learned there also that a ship from France with 
a valuable cargo of his goods and twenty men for his 
colony had been wrecked in the St. Lawrence, the 
goods being lost, and that of twenty men it brought 
only four were faithful to him. At Frontenac he 
found his affairs in confusion. His agent in his 
absence had acted in bad faith, and his creditors 
were about to seize everything. Yet within a week 
at Montreal he had arranged his finances and pro- 
cured the necessary supplies for the relief of 
Tonty; and he was about to set out again for the 
Illinois when two men sent by Tonty arrived from 
the Illinois with the discouraging news that short- 
ly after he had left Crevecoeur all but four of his 

57 



58 Starved Bock 

men had mutinied; that they had demolished the 
fort and stolen his goods, destroying what they 
could not carry off; and had decam2)ed. And we 
are reminded of the swift succession of the mis- 
fortunes that fell upon J ob when we learn that this 
disaster had but been told him when there came to 
La Salle two of his men in hot haste from Macki- 
nac and the Lakes to tell him that the Crevecoeur 
deserters, with other scoundrels of the woods, had 
plundered and destroyed his Fort Miami, had 
seized his stock of furs at Mackinac, and had just 
rifled Fort Conti at Niagara, where they had 
divided into two bands, one going to Albany, then 
a harborage of thieves of that sort, while the other 
party of twelve men were even now on their way 
to Frontenac to kill him. 

Acting with characteristic energy La Salle inter- 
cepted this latter body of men, and captured all 
but two who on resisting arrest were shot. The 
prisoners were ^aken to Frontenac and held for 
sentence by the governor, while La Salle turned 
again to the succor of Tonty. 

On August 6, 1680, La Salle again set out for the 
Illinois, accompanied by Francois de la Forest, as 
his lieutenant, and twenty-four men, soldiers, ar- 
tisans, voyageurs and laborers. At Mackinac all 
was hostile. He left La Forest to collect the pro- 
visions La Salle could not himself buy and to form 



xi Year of Disaster 59 

his rear guard, while he himself pushed forward. 
On November 4 he reached the ruined Fort Miami, 
where he left heavy stores and a guard of five men 
to wait for the coming of La Forest. AVith the re- 
mainder of the men, a x)arty of seven all told, he 
hurried on, full of anxiety and apprehension con- 
cerning Tonty, of whom he had heard nothing. The 
route was by the Kankakee trail; but unlike the 
year previous, the country now was teeming witli 
game. On reaching the Illinois they stopped for a 
three days' hunt, and killed twelve buffalo besides 
many deer and waterfowl, whose meat they dried 
and smoked. The men were elated with the sport 
and the prospect of relieving Tonty and his com- 
panions with ample food. 

The morale of the men was excellent. They were 
in fine spirits; but as they approached the great 
town of the Kaskaskias the oppressive quiet and 
apparent absence of human life filled them with 
apprehension. The great Eock of St. Louis, where 
La Salle had expected to find Tonty in a new 
stronghold, they foimd untenanted and undis- 
turbed, ^4ts primeval crest of forest still over- 
hanging the river." Arriving soon after at the 
great town itself, they saw on all sides a scene of 
awful carnage and desolation. Everything was a 
waste. The lodges had been burned and many of 
the charred poles that had formed their frames 



60 Starved Rock 

now carried human heads half picked by birds of 
prey. The dead were strewn over the plain; for 
even the burial place of the village had been defiled 
and the bodies flung down from their scaffolds; 
while noisome birds and animals feasted on the hor- 
rid carrion. La Salle knew it as the work of the 
Iroquois.* The conquerors had completed their 
work by opening and destroying the corn caches, 
whose contents they had burned in heaps or had 
scattered half burned over the plain. 

But nowhere, either among the ruins of the vil- 
lage or in the cold camps of the Iroquois, could any 
trace be found of Tonty. Night came on, so l)it- 
terly cold that although fearful they were com- 
pelled to build fires. A Avatch was set, but they 
were not disturbed. All night long La Salle pon- 
dered, trying to make up his mind what to do. 
When morning came he had decided to go on. Two 
men were left near the Rock with the stores, which 
were hidden in the caves of the shore rocks ; while 
the men themselves were lodged on an island just 
above the Rock and warned to keep themselves con- 
cealed. Well armed and provisioned, they awaited 
La Salle's return. 

In descending the river La Salle could easily 
trace the flight of the Illinois and the pursuit ; but 
nowhere was there any sign of Tonty or of any 

* Parkmax : " La Salle," etc. 



A Year of Disaster 61 

white man, altliough La Salle followed the river 
to its mouth. Here he stopped, putting l)ehind 
him the temptation to abandon his men in the rear 
and go on to the Gulf; and having left letters on 
trees for Tonty, he retraced his way. At the Rock 
he found his w^aiting men, and then the united 
party continued to ascend the river. On January 
6, 1681, they reached the junction of the Kankakee, 
and finding there no sign of Tonty, they chose the 
Desplaines, or ' ^ Checagou, ' ' route. Presently they 
came to a sort of rude cabin where they found a 
piece of sawed w^ood, which brought the relief of 
l)elieving that Tonty had escaped the horrors of the 
massacre and had passed that way. 

Hiding their canoes on the trail. La Salle and 
his men \vent across the country to Fort Miami, 
which they at last reached in safety, but only after 
a terrible march over a timberless country covered 
with a great fall of snow^ so light they could not use 
snow^ shoes, while they themselves were exposed to 
piercing cold made more terrible by high winds 
from off Lake Michigan. At Miami they found La 
Forest and all the men, housed in a rebuilt fort and 
surrounded by land cleared for the spring plant- 
ing, while the timbers and planks for a new vessel 
for the lake were ready to l)e put together. 
But no word of Tonty. Where was he 1 
When La Salle left Crevecoeur for Canada, 



62 Starved Bock 

Tonty remained in command of fifteen men, onl,y a 
few of whom had any heart in the enterprise for 
which they were engaged; and when the two men 
arrived from Fort Miami, bringing La Salle's 
letters and the news of the loss of the Griffin, they 
were all ripe for revolt. Taking advantage of the 
absence of Tont}^, who with five men had gone to 
examine the Rock, the malcontents destroyed the 
Crevecoeur fort and all of La Salle's goods they 
conld not carry away, and disappeared. Only the 
faithful Sieur de Boisrondet and La Salle's serv- 
ant, I'Esperance, remained loyal. They hastened 
to Tonty with the evil news, who sent four of the 
men with himself in |)arties of two to notify La 
Salle. Two men, as we have seen, reached him ; the 
others did not. 

Tonty 's force was thus reduced to three men and 
the two friars. Although the Illinois treated them 
with suspicion, Tonty boldly took up his abode in 
the village to await there La Salle's return. The 
spring and summer passed without event, and it 
was not until September that the terrible tedium 
of life in an Indian village was broken by a storm 
that brought desolation in its path. The crash 
came like lightning out of a clear sky. It was Sep- 
tember 10, and the village lay in the lethargy of a 
warm summer day, when a Shawanoe, that morn- 
ing a departing guest, recrossed the river in haste 



A Year of Disaster 63 

with the news that he had seen in the woods of the 
Vermilion (Aramoni) River an Iroquois army 
coming to attack them. In an instant the village 
was in a tumult ; and immediate vengeance seemed 
about to settle upon Tonty and his men, whom the 
Illinois accused of bringing the Iroquois upon 
them. Tonty 's address and courage saved his 




►SleM': of Toxty's Encounter w iXii liioc^uoib. 

(Approximate.) 

party ; and next day when the fight began,"^ in the 
hope of saving the Illinois, naturally a cowardly 
race,t but friends of La Salle, Tonty undertook to 
pre^vent an encounter at arms. Laying aside his 



* The scene was the prairie on the bluff south of the river, at the 
edge of the woods near the mouth of Vermilion River. 
t Parkman : "La Salle," etc. 



64: Starved Eock 

gun and taking a necklace of wamiomn, he ad- 
vanced to meet the Iroquois, accompanied by 
Boisrondet and a young Illinois warrior. ^^When 
I was within gunshot, " writes Tonty, ^^the Iroquois 
shot at us, seized me, took the necklace from my 
hand, and one of them plunged a knife in my breast, 
wounding a rib near the heart. However, [a 
Seneca] having recognized me, they carried me in- 
to the midst of their camp, and asked what I came 
for. I gave them to understand that the Illinois 
were under the protection of the King of France 
and the governor of the country, and that I was 
surprised that they wished to break with the French 
and not continue at peace. At this time skirmish- 
ing was going on, on both sides, and a warrior came 
to give notice that the Iroquois left wing was giv- 
ing way, and that they had recognized some French- 
men among the Illinois, who had shot at them. On 
hearing this they were greatly irritated at me, and 
held a council on what they should do with me. 
There w^as a man behind me with a knife in his 
hand, who every now and then lifted my hair. 
They were divided in opinion. Tegantouki, a 
chief, desired to have me burnt. Agoasto, chief of 
the Onondagas, wished to have me set at liberty 
as the friend of M. de la Salle, and he carried his 
point. They agreed that in order to deceive the 
Illinois they should give me a necklace of porcelain 



A Year of Disaster 65 

beads to prove that they were children of the gov- 
ernor, and ought to unite and make a good peace. 
They sent me to deliver this message to the Illi- 
nois. I had much difficulty in reaching them, on 
account of the blood I had lost. On my way I met 
the Fathers Ribourde and JVIembre who were com- 
ing to look after me. We went together to the 
Illinois, to whom I reported the sentiments of the 
Iroquois toward them, adding, however, that they 
must not altogether trust them.''* 

The Illinois then returned to their village which, 
owing to the presence and arrogance of the Iro- 
quois, the timid that night burned, taking advan- 
tage of the confusion of the fire to recover their 
women and children from an island w^here they had 
been placed and to steal away down the river, while 
the Iroquois took possession of the ruins and en- 
trenched themselves there. 

Two days later the Iroquois proposed a peace; 
but as it was a transparent pretext, Tonty advised 
the Illinois to get away as quickly and as far as pos- 
sible, which they did. Still later the Iroquois eager 
to fall upon the Illinois but not daring to do so 
with TDnty about, went to him mth presents of 
skins to induce (and also to threaten) him to leave 
at once; but Tonty rejected the gifts with con- 
tempt, whereupon the Iroquois peremptorily or- 



Toxty: "^[cmoir of 1093." 



66 Starved Rock 

dered him to leave. Being unable to do anything 
more for the Illinois, Tonty obeyed. After the 
French had departed up the river, the Iroquois 
completed the ruin of the village, desecrated the 
graves of the Illinois and started in pursuit of the 
fugitives on the river. Those in flight su:ffered 
comparatively little, but they were literally driven 
out of the country. The kindred tribe of Tama- 
roas, however, who for some reason did not try to 
get away, were slaughtered in their village, near 
the mouth of the Illinois, with terrible cruelties 
and burnings. 

Tonty and his friends left the ruined village on 
September 18, all in one poor canoe and with only 
scanty supplies of provisions and ammunition to 
reach succor on the Lakes. They had traveled 
until about noon of the following day when an ac- 
cident to the canoe compelled a long halt, during 
which Father Ribourde, in spite of Tonty 's warn- 
ings, retired apart to say his breviary and did not 
return, nor was he ever found. It was learned aft- 
erwards that he was murdered by a wandering 
band of Kickapoos— coyotes gleaning on the trail 
of the wolfish Iroquois. ^^So perished the first 
martyr upon Illinois soil, Gabriel de la Ri- 
bourde."'^ 



* Gabriel de la Ribourde was the only son and heir of a gentleman 
of Burgundy. He was noted in France as in Canada for his piety 



A Year of Disaster 61 

Unable to find Father Ribourde, the little party 
of five went on up the Illinois. At the junction 
with the Kankakee they unfortunately chose the 
Chicago route, and, believing La Salle to be dead, 
left no sign of their passing that way. As the win- 
ter came on the men suffered more and more from 
sickness, cold, hunger and privation of every kind, 
and it was not until in December that they were 
rescued from certain death by an accidental meet- 
ing with Indians near Sturgeon Bay in Wisconsin 
and taken to a Pottawatomie village, where both 
the Indians and some resident Frenchmen nursed 
Tonty back to life and health. Father Membre 
proceeded after resting to the St. Xavier (De 
Pere) Mission and reported the details of a jour- 
ney comparable in toil and suffering only to that 
which La Salle himself had made across Michigan 
the previous winter. 



and saintly devotion to the mission cause, for which he sacrificed 
every thing — home, friends, wealth, clerical position, his life. He was 
sixty-four years old. — Mason ; "Chapters from Illinois History." 




(yiTci cao^ane' 



A YEAR OF SUCCESS. 

With aching hands and bleeding feet, 
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone ; 

We bear the burden and the heat 
Of the long day and wish 'twere done. 

Not till the hours of light return 

All we have built do we discern. 

— Mattliezv Arnold. 

LA SALLE FOUNDS 1118 COLONY. 

La Salle spent the winter of 1680-81 at his Fort 
Miami, intent upon rebuilding his broken fortunes. 
'^ There is something almost touching the super- 
natural in the courage and resolution of La Salle," 
says Dunn.'^ ^'At that rude fort on the bank of the 
St. Josei:>h, in the discomforts of a severe winter, 
hundreds of miles from the French settlements, the 
faithful Tonty carried captive, killed or a fugitive, 
he knew not which, his remaining comrades dis- 
heartened, his colony sw^ept from the face of the 
earth, his means dissipated by disasters of flood 
and field, this man calmly reconstructed his plans 
and prepared to renew his enterprise on a more ex- 
tended basis than before." 

First of all, he had to put an end to the incursions 
of the Iroquois— not a simple matter by any means. 
For the Iroquois were moved by more than their 

*Dunn: "Indiana" (Am. Commonwealth Series), p. 26-7. 

69 



70 Starved Rock 

congenital bloodthirstiness to those fierce on- 
slaugiits that had made their name a terror in tlie 
West. By their contract with tlie whites they had 
acquired many new wants which only the white 
man could satisfy, while the game, under the pres- 
sure of more systematic commercial hunting, had 
begun to be scarcer and skins harder to obtain, mak- 
ing it necessary therefore for them to control wider 
hunting grounds in order to get the peltries that 
their craving for liquor and their need of ammu- 
nition and other goods demanded. Hence the 
widening area of human desolation wrought by 
those scourges of the wilderness, which now had 
extended from the St. Lawrence to the Ohio and 
from the Hudson to the Mississippi. 

Unless, therefore, these raids could be stopped, 
La Salle's enterprise in the Illinois country would 
come to nothing but ruin. He proposed then, to 
unite the western tribes in a confederacy of de- 
fense against the Iroquois and to colonize them all 
around or near to his Illinois base, which, as we 
have seen, he intended to make at the Rock. There, 
with the flag of France over all, he hoped to hold 
the Iroquois in check and establish both a profit- 
able trading station and a permanent colony of 
Frenchmen, the outlet of whose activities he would 
make at the Gulf of ^lexico and not on the St. 
Lawrence. 



A Year of Success 71 

The issue of recent Indian wars in the east fa- 
A^orecl him; for near Fort Miami, as he -found on 
his return, there were the huts of twenty to thirty 
Abenakis and Mohegans, fugitives from Puritan 
victors in King Philip 's War. These readily allied 
themselves with La Salle, 3delding him ^^the love 
and admiration he rarely failed to command from 
this hero-worshiping race,"^ and making him 
their leader. One after another the Shawanoes and 
Miamis, who also had suffered from the Iroquois, 
joined the league and attached themselves to La 
Salle. In March, 1681, then, with La Forest as his 
lieutenant, he set out for the great town of the Ill- 
inois in the hope that the occupants had begun to 
return to it and could be won over to his plans. On 
the way thither he encountered a band of Foxes, or 
Outagamies, of Green Bay, from whom he learned 
the fate of Tonty and also that Hennepin and Al^o 
had returned from among the Sioux— news that 
gave him peculiar delight. 

At the ruined town he met a band of Illinois, first 
of the returning fugitives, to whom he gave pres- 
ents and whom he urged to make peace with the 
Miamis in the interest of the common defense 
against the Iroquois. He had sent La Forest to 
Mackinac to hold Tonty until he could meet him 
there in person; and having completed his work 



*Parkman: "La Salle," etc. 



72 Starved Bock 

among the Illinois, he returned to Fort Miami; 
and later at the Miami village at the St. Joseph 
portage, he was able to discomfit certain Iroquois 
spies and cement his league by a formal treaty with 
the tribes, that left him free to proceed with his 
great enterprise of finding the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi and establishing his colony on the Illinois. 

First, it was necessary to go to Canada. At Mac- 
kinac he met Father Membre and Tonty, as one 
might meet those who had returned from the grave ; 
and together all went to La Salle's Fort Frontenac 
and thence to Montreal. For a third time La Salle 
had to pacify his creditors and dicker for more 
credit and supplies, in all of which, with the aid 
of Barrios, Count Frontenac 's secretary, and the 
support of a wealthy relative, in whose favor La 
Salle made his will, he was entirely successful. 
Then with Tonty, Father Membre, about thirty 
Frenchmen and more than a hundred Indians— 
Shawanoes, Abenakis and others from New Eng- 
land—he again started for the Illinois, reaching 
Fort Miami in November, 1681. 

A delay here of about a month gave all a needed 
rest before the great Mississippi quest began. The 
start was made on December 21, 1681, the entire 
party consisting of La Salle, Tonty, D'Autray, 
Father Membre, twenty-three Frenchmen and In- 
dians, with their squaws and children, in all fifty- 



A Year of Success 73 

four people. On the day named, Tonty and Father 
Membre, with a portion of tlie company, set out 
for Cliicago River. La Salle and the others fol- 
lowed a few days later. They found Illinois River 
closed with ice ; and the canoes and luggage were 
therefore placed on sleds which were drawn over 
the ice and snow for a hundred miles, or until open 
water was reached below Peoria Lake. Then all 
took to the canoes. They entered the Mississii^pi 
on February 6, 1682. On April 6 they arrived at 
the Mississippi delta, where the great river divided 
itself into three broad channels. The command 
was then divided into three parties, led respectively 
by La Salle, Tonty and D'Autray,* all of whom 
reached the Gulf. Later they united on a spot of 
dry ground just above the main mouth of the rivei', 
where a column was erected bearing the arms of 
France and the inscription: ^' Louis Le Grand, 
Roy de France et de Navarre, regne ; le Neuvieme 
Avril, 1682." The Te Deum was chanted; and La 
Salle in a formal proclamation took possession of 
the river and all the lands it drained in the name' 
of the King. Then all chanted the grand hymn of 
the Yexilla Regis,— 



* As D'Aiitray's name does not again appear except incidentally in 
this narrative, it may be said that this "always very faithful and brave" 
officer settled on lands near the Rock, granted him by La Salle. He 
served with Tonty in the war of 1687. In the spring of 1688. after 
escorting a convoy to Fort Frontenac, he was murdered by the Iroquois 
while returning to his Illinois home. 



74 Starved Rock 

The banners of Heaven's King advance, 
The mystery of the Cross shines forth; — 

and when all was over ''the realm of France had 
received on parchment a stupendous accession— all 
by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half 
a mile. ' '^ 

La Salle had thus achieved an everlasting name 
and realized some portion of his magnificent vision 
of empire. It remained to accomplish the rest. 

The return to the Illinois was slow ; and when he 
had again reached what is now known as the Chick- 
asaw Bluffs (Memphis), he became too ill to travel 
further, and thereupon rested at a fort called Prud- 
homme, built while descending the river. Tonty 
was dispatched in advance to Mackinac to send to 
Canada the news of the issue of the journey, and 
then to return to the Illinois. La Salle himself 
was able to reach Fort Miami in August and Mack- 
inac in September. 

It had been La Salle's intention to proceed at 
once to France to bring out a colony to take posses- 
sion of and to hold the mouth of the Mississippi ; 
])ut his illness and rumors of a raid into the West 
by the Iroquois put that plan out of the question 
for the immediate present ; and he turned back to 
the Illinois, having sent Father Membre to Europe 
in his stead to make known his great discovery to 



* Parkman : "La Salle," etc. 



A Year of Success 75 

the King at Paris. Father Membre arrived at Que- 
bec just in time to sail for France on November 
17 in the same ship that carried Count Frontenac 
also back to his native land, the latter having been 
relieved of the governorship by LeFebvre de la 
Barre. Of this last and greatest misfortune, the 
dei3arture of his onlv official friend in Canada, La 
Salle at that moment happily knew nothing. 

In pursuance of his plans, therefore, La Salle, 
in December, 1682, with Tonty and his men, went 
from Fort Miami to the Rock and there entrenched 
hunself, cutting away the forest that covered the 
top and building a storehouse and dwellings with 
the timbers, encircling all with a palisade of logs 
drawn up from the forest below. The stronghold 
thus made he named Fort St. Louis. And this 
was the first permanent settlement of the white 
race made in the Mississippi Valley.* 

During the winter La Salle's Indian allies be- 
gan to gather about the Rock, finding in the com- 
mander at Fort St. Louis a refuge and a defense 
from the Iroquois ; and when the spring and sum- 
mer had come again, the ^^Rock was indeed like a 
veritable feudal castle, from which La Salle looked 
down upon a concourse of wild human life. Lodges 
of bark and rushes, or cabins of logs, were clustered 
on the open plain or along the edges of the border- 



* MoNETTE : "History of the Mississippi Valley.' 



76 Starved Bock 

ing forests. Squaws labored, warriors lounged in 
the sun, naked children whooped and gamboled on 
the grass. Beyond the river, a mile, or a little more, 
on the left, the banks were studded once more with 
the lodges of the Illinois, who, to the number of 
six thousand, had returned to their favorite dwell- 
ing place. Scattered along the vallev, among the 
adjacent hills, or over the neighboring prairie, 
were the cantonments of half a score of other 
tribes, or fragments of tribes, gathered under the 
protecting aegis of the French: Shawanoes from 
the Ohio ; Abenakis from Maine, Miamis from the 
sources of the Kankakee, with others whose bar- 
barous names are hardly worth the record. Nor 
were these La Salle's only dependents. By the 
terms of his patent he had seigniorial rights over 
this wild domain; and now he began to grant it 
out in parcels to his followers."* 

At Fort St. Louis La Salle seemed to feel that 
his long wanderings were at an end.f The seat of 
his seigniory would be here; and he had only to 
surround himself with Frenchmen to realize his 
dream of seeing them and his Indian friends united 
in joint agricultural and commercial enterprise. 
The land itself invited such enterprise. La Salle 
often spoke of the Illinois as a terrestrial paradise. 

* Parkman : "La Salle," etc. 

t Mason : "Chapters of Illinois History," pt. 1. 



A Year of Success 77 

Tonty, a man of few words and not given to ex- 
aggeration, says it was as charming a country as 
one anywhere might see— ^^a great plain adorned 
with trees and abounding in strange fruits." It 
was a hunter's paradise, alive with bison; deer 
grazed in great herds, like flocks of sheep ; and there 
were land and water fowl without number. Father 
Membre also speaks of the River Seignelay, as he 
calls the Illinois, as very beautiful and of all the 
country along the river as charming in its aspect. 
*^And it was with the feeling that they had come 
to the garden of the earth that La Salle 's retain- 
ers began their preparations for a feudal establish- 
ment within its borders, after the pattern of those 
of the old world. "^ 

The names of twenty or more of those whom La 
Salle thus encouraged to make clearings and to 
plant crops, grantees of his lands in the Illinois, 
are preserved in the records of the Superior Coun- 
cil of Quebec and are given in part by Mason as 
follows: Michael Dizy, Riverin, Pierre Chenet, 
Frangois Pachot, Chan j on, Frangois Hazeur, 
Louis Le Yasseur, Mathieu Marlin, Frangois Char- 
ron, les Sieurs D'Autray, d' Artigny and La Ches- 
naye, Jacques de Faye, Pierre La Vasseur, Michael 
Guyon, Poisset, Andrede Chaulne, Marie Joseph 
le Neuf, Michael de Grez Philipes Esnault, Jean 



* Mason : Ibid. 



78 



Starved Boeh 



Petit, Rene Fezeret, the Sieiirs Laporte, Louvigny 
and de St. Castin, Francois de la Forest, Henry de 
Tonty, and the Jesuit Fathers. 

La Salle in a memoir addressed to the Minister 
of the Marine reports the total number of the In- 
dians around Fort St. Louis at this time at about 
four thousand warriors, or twenty thousand souls. 
His diplomacy had been crowned with a marvel- 
ous success, due, first, to the Iroquois and the uni- 
versal terror which they inspired ; and next to his 
own skillful address and unwearied energy." 



* Parkman : "La Salle."' etc. 




Taking Possession of Louisiana. 

[From "Wisconsin" in "Stories of the States."] 



KISMET. 

The sequel of to-day unsolders all 
The goodliest fellowship of famous Knights 
Whereof this world has record. Such a sleep 
They sleep — the men I loved. 

— Tennyson: "Morte d' Arthur." 

FAILURE AND DEATH. 

In spite of difficulties and hindrances whicli to 
other men would have seemed insurmountable. La 
Salle had succeeded, and the corner stone of a new 
empire had been laid. It onh^ remained to rear 
the superstructure on La Salle's foundation. '^Ilis 
colony had sprung up, however, in a night ; nuglit 
not a night suffice to disperse if?" Its permanence 
depended, first of all, at this time, upon the good 
will and co-operation of the government at Que- 
bec. Unfortunately, Frontenac had been recalled 
and La Barre in Canada ^^ reigned in his stead." 

No sooner had La Salle become seated at Fort 
St. Louis and La Barre at Quebec than La Salle 
began to realize that he no longer had a real friend 
in official or commercial Canada ; but rather that 
all was hostile to him and his great purpose. La 
Barre was hopelessly avaricious, narrow minded 
and absolutely without capacity as a statesman. 
He began his administration with enmity in 

79 




La Salle. 



[The above portrait is said by Winsor. "Narrative and Critical 
History," to be based on an engraving preserved in the library of 
Rouen, entitled "Cavilli de la Salle Francois," and is the only picture 
of La Salle meriting attention, except one, a small vignette, published 
by Gravier, which shows the face of a slighter man than is here indi- 
cated and one of more spiritual cast of countenance than the above.] 



Kismet 81 

thought and deed toward La Salle, whose men sent 
from the Illinois for supplies and ammunition for 
the Fort, a government as well as private station, 
were prevented from returning; whose fur car- 
riers were plundered or encouraged to plunder 
him; whose supplies were detained in Canada or 
stolen on the way. In spite of pleadings and pro- 
tests and devices to win LaBarre's good will, La 
Salle everywhere found impediments placed in his 
way by that official and by the Jesuit Fathers. At 
Paris also his discoveries were belittled by La 
Barre, his acts and motives misrepresented and 
his character libeled. The governor even went so 
far as to encourage the Dutch at Albany, in their 
intrigues with the Iroquois, to renew the war on 
the Illinois, solely to embarrass La Salle, notwith- 
standing the evils such a war might bring to Can- 
ada. Finally, having cut off the post on the Illi- 
nois from all supplies. La Barre even dared to 
seize La Salle's Fort Frontenac and rob it of its 
stores which he sold for his own and the official 
ring's private benefit; and in various other ways 
La Barre made La Salle's continued occupation of 
the Illinois difficult to impossible. 

Early in the autumn of 1683, therefore, finding 
his position no longer tenable under the circum- 
stances, La Salle left Tonty in command at Fort 
St. Louis and started for Quebec to sail for France, 



82 Starved Rock 

iu order to organize a colony whicli should pro- 
ceed under his leadership to the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi and there make a settlement which should 
command the outlet of the valley and become the 
entrepot of its commerce. Thus La Salle hoped 
to free himself and the Illinois from their peren- 
nial menace, the provincial government at Quebec. 

On his way eastward, at a fort he had built at 
Chicago, La Salle met the Chevalier de Baugis 
with his escort, who by command of La Barre was 
then on his way to Fort St. Louis to take command 
of the post. La Salle was furious ; but he con- 
trolled his wrath and gave De Baugis letters to 
Tont}^, directing the latter to yield the command 
gracefully but to remain as his agent in charge 
of his personal effects and representative of his 
interests at the Rock. 

It was on September 1, 1683, only a few days 
after receiving La Barre 's order to surrender his 
Fort to De Baugis, that La Salle, while resting at 
his Chicago station, wrote the letter to Antoine 
Brossard,* which proved to be his farewell mes- 
sage to his faithful friends at tlie Rock, and which 
is paraphrased in translation by Mason as fol- 
lows :t 



* Brossard was a member of La Salle's Mississippi expedition. The 
letter, !Mason says, was preserved by Brossard and his descendants 
until in 1895, when it came to sale at Montreal, it was purchased by 
him as Secretary of the Chicago Historical Society, in whose keeping it 
now is. 

t Masox : "Land of the Illinois." 



Kismet 83 

^^Begiuning with an expression of gratitude to 
his people at the Rock for their fidelity, he prom- 
ises to reward them therefor as soon as he shall 
have scattered the little storm, as he hopes to do. 
He tells them that Rolland* is awaiting him at Mis- 
silimackinac with a good cargo, and that he is tak- 
ing there with him La Fontaine, La Violette, the 
Sieur d' Autray and the two Shawanoes whom he 
will send back to bring them some of it. He as- 
sures them that from the King, who is the greatest 
and most just prince of the universe, they have 
cause to expect only the recompense due to the 
courage they have shown in the discovery and the 
making of the post, and urges them to work, since 
the gain of their own cause and his depends on 
their establishment. They should therefore all set- 
tle themselves on large clearings, and if there re- 
mains anything to be done at the Fort, they should 
work at it as at a thing for their true interests. 
He proposes to return by sea in the spring, and 
they wdll have merchandise and all their require- 
ments, and even something to drink his health 
with, as Rolland has saved him a barrel of whis- 
ky. They must be united and follow Tonty's coun- 
sel and orders. And one thing of great conse- 
quence is to gather as many butfalo skins as pos- 
sible, for which Boisrondet (his commissary at the 



*A noted trader and voyagciir. 




[This picture is a' reproduction (from Winsor: "Narrative and 
Critical History of America") of a reproduction in Margry's "Me- 
mories," etc.. of an old copper plate published a few years after La 
Salle's death. It was by Van der Gucht, and appears in the London 
edition (1698) of Hennepin's "New Discovery." The face of La Salle, 
enlarged, is that painted by Healey and reproduced on p. 40.] 



Kismet 85 

Fort) will give for the larger two beaver skins and 
for the smaller, one. They must always speak with 
great respect of the governor, and obey his orders, 
even if he were to command them to abandon the 
Fort, and do nothing that looks like plotting and 
combining. ' ' 

As always at the court of Louis, La Salle in 
Paris was again successful in overthrowing his 
enemies. The time was propitious. Louis's rela- 
tions with Spain made La Salle's proposition to 
seize the mouth of the Mississippi a welcome one ; 
and he obtained all he asked for. La Barre was 
rebuked and La Forest, then in France, was sent 
back as La Salle's agent to reoccupy both Fort 
Frontenac and Fort St. Louis and to take charge 
of all his properties, which La Barre was directed 
to restore to their owner. Finally in 1684, with 
about one hundred and seventy-five colonists, in 
four ships, La Salle sailed from Rochelle for the 
Mississippi. 

Unfortunately, the command while at sea was 
given to the naval officer, Beaujeu; there was fric- 
tion among the leaders, for which both were re- 
sponsible; and all went wrong. A storm drove 
them to a haven far to the west of their destina- 
tion, the mouth of the great river, and it was nec- 
essary to make a landing on the shore of the pres- 
ent state of Texas, where an attempt was made 



86 Starved Rock 

to found a settlement. What follows is a tale of 
miserable disappointment, acute suffering, foul 
treachery, abject failure, death. While making- 
search for the lost Mississippi, La Salle was mur- 
dered by his own men when on Trinity River, Tex- 
as, on March 19, 1687. Certain malcontents first 
killed La Salle's nephew, then his faithful Shaw- 
noe hunter, and his servant, and finally they slew 
La Salle also, from an ambuscade. The body was 
dragged naked among the bushes and there aban- 
doned to the wild beasts, its burial by his brother, 
the Abbe Cavelier, being forbidden by the murder- 
ers. Thus in the vigor of his manhood, at the age 
of forty-three, died Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la 
Salle; and the heroic age of Canada came to an 
end. ^^ Behold," says Tonty, closing his brief ac- 
count of this disaster, ^^ behold the fate of one of 
the greatest men of the age ; of wonderful ability, 
and capable of accomplishing any enterprise." 

As for the colonists, many of them, including the 
excellent Father Membre, counted always, with 
Tonty, La Forest and Boisrondet, as one of the 
most faithful and trusted of all La Salle's com- 
panions, were massacred by the Indians; some 
others escaped with the fleet to France ; a few were 
captured and treated as prisoners of war by the 
Spaniards; while Abbe Cavelier, La Salle's broth- 
er, Bouay and Joutel, commander of the soldiers 
attached to the colony, as we shall see, reached the 
Rock and finallv were able to return to France. 



LA SALLE. 

I liear the tread of pioneers 

Of nations yet to be; 
The first low wash of waves where soon 

Shall roll a human sea. 

—JVhittier. 

HIS drea:^! of lairiRE. 

It lias been the fashion in certain quarters to 
belittle the character and accomplishments of La 
Salle. While Parkman makes him second only to 
Champlain as the greatest of all French discover- 
ers of the great West, Dr. Shea treats him as sim- 
ply a follower of trails that others had previously 
blazed. Parkman bears testimony to the heroic 
persistence of the man in spite of immense physi- 
cal and financial difficulties and the more disheart- 
ening machinations of enemies, whose adverse in- 
fluence was felt at every step of his career, from 
the court of Louis XIV. to his grave in Texas. Dr. 
Shea, on the other hand, ascribes his failure to a 
fatal lack of capacity as an explorer. ^^ La Salle 
was doubtless a persuasive talker in setting forth 
his projects," he says, ^ though utterly incapable 
of carrying out even the simplest." 

There is a small element of truth in the latter 
view of La Salle, but the statement is an exaggera- 

87 




KoBERT Cavelier Sieur de La Salle. 

[L,ouis Hennepin's "Nouvelle Decouverte," London 

Edition of 1688. The picture is interesting, but 

as a portrait it has absolutely no value.] 



La Salle 89 

tion of La Salle's real fault. It is true that La 
Salle, strictly speaking, discovered nothing except 
the Ohio River— neither the Mississippi nor its out- 
let, both of which had been seen by the Spaniards 
more than a hundred 3^ears before he was born ; but 
these discoveries the Spaniard had long since for- 
gotten, and La Salle's claim of the interior of the 
continent for France by right of his discovery of 
the Ohio and of the mouth of the Mississippi and 
by his occupation thereof was never disputed. As 
to the Northwest, though La Salle was not the first 
to explore its lakes and rivers, he certainly was 
the first to enter it as a settler and as the pioneer 
of those who here have made a great state. 

Mr. Moses* goes even further than Shea, attrib- 
uting to La Salle a bickering spirit, which certain- 
ly is not a characteristic of the man as he is pic- 
tured b}^ Parkman, confessedly the most competent 
historian of this period and department of our 
American history. Moses says : ' ' Had the French 
governor [La Barre, La Salle's enemy at all times] 
and La Salle pooled their issues, and instead of 
endeavoring to break each other down worked to- 
gether, there was nothing to prevent their build- 
ing up a colony at Fort St. Louis [Starved Rock], 
which would have been of great advantage to the 
interests of each, and exerted a controlling influ- 



*JoHN Moses: ''History of Illinois. 



90 Starved Bock 

once upon the destiny of New France. Had agri- 
culture and permanent settlement been encouraged 
in connection with the traffic with the Indians, a 
pros23erous and powerful comnnmit}^ might have 
been established, which, growing and extending to 
other equally favorable localities in the Illinois 
country, might in fifty years have constituted a 
community which would have proved an insuper- 
able barrier against any foreign encroachment, in 
consequence of its ability to maintain its own in- 
tegrity. But the rapacity of one and the ambi- 
tion of the other prevented the accom23lishment of 
such a result.'' 

Mr. Moses has overlooked the fact that this very 
idea was, in truth, the keynote of La Salle's ca- 
reer; that is, to take possession of and settle the 
Mississippi Valley ; but in this purpose he had the 
jealous and mercenary opposition of La Barre, the 
governor, and also of the Jesuits, neither of whom 
then desired permanent settlers about them to in- 
terfere with their respective relations with the In- 
dians. The responsibility for the failure of La 
Salle's attempts to colonize the Illinois rests much 
more with the court and the priesthood on the St. 
Lawrence than with La Salle on the Illinois. His 
failures, as the result of his own faults, must be 
attributed, not so much to the withering influences 
of a soul consumed with petty quarrels and a bick- 



La Salle 91 

ering spirit, but rather to his unfortunate inability 
to create real friendships among his own people, 
and to his besetting sin of trusting to no one but 
himself for the execution of the simplest tasks, 
even of projects requiring for their, success the co- 
operation of large bodies of men. 

•^It is easy to reckon up his defects, but it is not 
eas}^ to hide from sight the Roman virtues that 
redeemed them," writes Parkman. ^' Beset by a 
throng of enemies, he stands, like the King of 
Israel, head and shoulders above them all. He 
was a tower of adamant, against whose impregna- 
ble front hardship and danger, the rage of man 
and of the elements, the southern sun, the north- 
ern blast, fatigue, famine and disease, delay, dis- 
appointment and deferred hope emptied their 
quivers in vain. That very pride, which Coriola- 
nus like, declared itself most sternly in the thick- 
est press of foes, has in it something to challenge 
admiration. Never, under the impenetrable mail 
of paladin or crusader, beat a heart of more intrep- 
id metal than within the stoic panoply that armed 
the breast of La Salle. To estimate aright the mar- 
vels of his patient fortitude one must follow his 
track through the vast scene of his interminable 
journeyings, those thousands of weary miles of 
forest, marsh and river, where again and again, in 
the bitterness of baffled striving, the untiring pil- 



92 Starved Rock 

grim 23iislied onward toward the goal which he 
never was to attain."^ 

More than two hundred years have passed since 
La Salle perished in the trackless waste of the far 
Southwest, and his venturous soul fled to that 
^^ bourne from which no traveler returns"; but 
even as he stood upon the summit of Starved Rock 
in 1683, and his eye swept over the magnificent 
landscape, his prophetic spirit saw in the then dis- 
tant future the grandeur of the empire that was 
yet to come, whose very heart would throb in the 
fertile lands spread out before him, which he loved 
to characterize as ^^a terrestrial paradise." It was 
the master mind of La Salle that first conceived 
the policy which led on, step by step, from Starved 
Rock ^^to Fort Duquesne, Braddock's defeat and 
Forbes 's march to the Forks of the Ohio" and the 
train of events culminating in the fall of Quebec. t 
Looking into the future, La Salle saw on these 
prairies and upon the shores of the Great Lakes a. 
New France far more powerful than the old ; and 
this vision was the guiding star of his romantic ca- 
reer. As the first white man to establish a settle- 
ment upon her soil, he has been justly styled ^^the 
Father of Illinois"; but it was only when Wolfe 
triumphed on the Heights of Abraham that the 



* Parkman : "La Salle," etc. 

t Hinsdale: "The Old Northwest." 



La Salle 



93 



empire which La Salle foresaw and devoted his 
life to found became j)ossible. What La Salle 
did not see nor imagine was that the inexorable 
law of political evolution had destined that this 
great power would be not Norman but Anglo-Sax- 
on. 




Path Leading to the Top of Starved Eock. 



TONTY. 

His step is firm, his eye is keen, 
Nor years in brawl and battle spent, 
Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have bent 

The lordly frame of old Castin. 

—Scott. 

Henry de Tonty, a veteran of the Sicilian wars,"* 
whom La Salle met in Paris in 1678 and brought 
to America, is one of the most superb figures in 
the annals of the exploration of the Mississippi 
Valley. His industry and energy, his bravery and 
his tact, his integrity and his faithfulness, his hon- 
orable character and amiable disposition, unite to 



* Tonty was the son of Lorenzo Tonty. a banker at Naples. Italy. 
In his petition addressed to the Count de Pontchartrain. Minister of 
Marine, in 1690 [1691?], Tonty said that he entered the military service 
of France as a cadet in 1668-1669; served four years as a midshipman 
at Marseilles and Toulon, making four campaigns on ships of war and 
three in galleys; was made captain at Messina, and in the interval was 
lieutenant of horse; had his right hand shot away by a grenade at 
Libisso; was taken prisoner and conducted to Metasse, where he was 
held for six months and then exchanged for the governor's son; after a 
visit to France he returned to Sicily, as a volunteer in the galleys ; and 
when the troops were discharged, having no other occupation, he joined 
La Salle, 1678. 

95 



9G Starved Rock 

differentiate him from all those whose names as 
the lesser stars crowd the pages of those early an- 
nals. Parkman calls him, ^^That brave, loyal and 
generous man, always vigilant and always active, 
beloved and feared alike by white man and by red. " 
Mrs. Catherwoodf says: ^^La Salle is a definite 
figure in the popular mind. But La Salle's great- 
er friend is known only to historians and students. 
To me the finest fact in the Norman explorer's ca- 
reer is the devotion he commanded in Henry de 
Tonty. No stupid dreamer, no ruffian at heart, 
no betrayer of friendships, no mere blundering 
woodsman— as La Salle has been outlined by his 
enemies— could have bound to himself such a man 
as Tonty. The love of this friend, and the words 
this friend has left on record, thus honor La Salle. 
And we who like courage and steadfastness and 
gentle courtesy in man owe much honor which has 
never been paid to Henry de Tonty." 

When La Salle left the Rock for France in Aug- 
ust, 1683, he placed Tonty in command. The sit- 
uation was desperate in the extreme. There were 
but about twenty white men at the Fort, and for 
these there was but little ammunition— scarcely a 
hundred i)oimds of powder, and proportionately 
as little lead, with which to do the hunting and to 
protect the Rock against the Iroquois who might 



fMRS. Mary Hartwell Catherwood: "The Story of Tonty." 



Tonty 97 

be expected at any time to attack the Fort; nor 
in tlie events of the immediate past was there hope 
or expectation of obtaining further supplies un- 
til La Salle himself should return ; and La Salle, 
as we have seen, was a few days later deprived of 
his command by De Baugis, whose ap^Dearance at 
the Rock confirmed Tonty 's worst suspicions of 
La Salle's disfavor at Quebec. 

At Fort St. Louis, under the divided authority 
of De Baugis and Tonty, the winter following La 
Salle's departure was passed amid much quarrel- 
ing, not the less bitter and continuous that De 
Baugis and his immediate superior, Durantaye, 
who came down from Mackinac, made it a part of 
their duty to detach as far as possible La Salle's 
men and his Indian allies from their allegiance to 
him and to render them discontented. In the 
spring there were again riunors of a coming raid 
by the Iroquois who were, in fact, encouraged in 
their outrages by the undisguised hostility of La 
Barre toward La Salle and all those associated 
with him. During the previous winter La Barre 's 
privately outfitted traders and trappers had in- 
vaded La Salle's grant, and both these men and 
the Iroquois felt they had free hands to rob whom- 
soever of La Salle's men or allies they should find. 
It was, then, with a sort of ^'poetic justice," that 
early in that same spring, a party of fourteen 



98 Starved Rock 

Frenchmen who had been outfitted by LaBarre 
and were led by Rene Le Gardeur, who had spent 
the winter on the Kankakee hunting under the 
protection of La Barre 's permits, were robbed by 
a party of raiding Iroquois on the Illinois." The 
Indians, indeed, treated La Barre 's permits and 
his letters to Durantaye and De Baugis with in- 
sulting contempt, and left the Frenchmen in so 
desperate a strait that they would probably have 
died of starvation but for the friendly offices of 
certain Mascoutins who guided them to the Green 
Bay mission. 

It was from this party of La Barre 's partisans 
that the scouting Iroquois learned that La Salle 
had been supplanted at Fort St. Louis and was no 
longer in the West. Thereupon the Iroquois or- 
ganized an immediate attack on the little garri- 
son. Rumors of the approaching foray coming 
to the ears of De Baugis and Tonty, De Baugis 
sent at once to Durantaye at Mackinac for aid and 
ammunition for the defense, of which they long had 
had need; but the day after the departure of the 
messenger the Iroquois appeared (March 20, 1681) 
and at once attacked the Fort and the allies. They 
sent a hail of bullets at the palisades by day and 
by night and even attempted the impossible— an 
assault; but after six days' fighting they were re- 



*The furs stolen are said to have been worth 16,000 francs (livres). 



Tonty 99 

pulsed aud withdrew. The Illinois and allied 
tribes then pursued vigorously. The prisoners 
taken by the Iroquois were enabled to escape ; 
while the pursuers returned to the Rock in tri- 
umph with many 'Iroquois scalps. 

Two months later (May 21, 1684) Durantaye 
came to the Rock with sixty Frenchmen, includ- 
ing Father Allouez, who was always to be found 
among the Illinois or their neighbors when La 
Salle was not. Ostensibly Durantaye had come 
from Mackinac to assist in the defense against the 
Iroquois ; but in fact his purpose was to send Ton- 
ty away. He brought LaBarre's order to Tonty 
to retire from the Rock, and Durantaye was pre- 
pared to enforce this order by physical means, if 
need be. Tonty, however, made no resistance ; and 
later in the same month, having turned over La 
Salle's property to the faithful Boisrondet, he left 
the Rock to go alone to Montreal and Quebec, 
reaching the latter place in August, after an ab- 
sence of some six years. Here he learned that La 
Barre had seized Fort Frontenac also and had 
ousted La Salle's agent La Forest, who also had 
returned to France, after having rejected with 
scorn LaBarre's proposal that he should remain 
in charge at Frontenac as a partner in the plunder 
of La Salle. 

La Salle, as we have seen, carried all before him 



100 Starved Rock 

at Paris and the court. La Barre was rebuked 
and directed to make complete reparation and im- 
mediate restoration of all the properties of which 
La Salle had been deprived and to deliver the 
same to La Forest who would return to Canada 
by the exTpress command of the King to receive 
them. The King further issued to La Salle a com- 
mission making him commandant of the whole re- 
gion from Fort St. Louis on the Illinois to ^^New 
Biscay" (northern Mexico) ; and in a personal let- 
ter to La Barre the King directed that he should 
^^do nothing adverse to the interests of La Salle 
whom he had taken under his particular protec- 
tion." 

When La Forest reached Quebec in September, 
1684, La Barre was still further humiliated by the 
knowledge that he had brought to Tonty the King's 
commission as captain of foot in the French army, 
as well as a royal order to La Barre to surrender 
Fort Frontenac to La Forest and Fort St. Louis 
(the Rock) to Tonty who was named as its gov- 
ernor. La Forest went at once to Frontenac, but 
Tonty was held at Montreal by the winter. In 
the following spring (1685), with an outfit valued 
at twenty thousand livres, he started for the Rock, 
which he reached in June ; and there can be little 
doubt that he took peculiar pleasure in giving De 
Baugis his dismissal. In his receipt (dated June 



Tonty 101 

26, 1685) to De Baugis for the command, he de- 
scribes himself as '^ first seigneur of the Isle of 
Tonty, captain of a company detached from the 
marine, sub-delegate of Monsieur de Meulle, In- 
tendant of New France, to the country of the Ot- 
tawas and other nations, and governor of Fort St. 
Louis/''' 

Tonty 's first duty was to restore harmony 
among his Indian allies. During De Baugis' ad- 
ministration, while Tonty was absent, the Miamis 
and" Illinois had quarreled, the breach being so 
serious that the Miamis had made a fierce attack 
on the Illinois. It cost Tonty many presents and 
much patient negotiation to restore the peace that 
was so necessary to the defense of the Rock against 
the Iroquois. 

It was fall before good feeling was restored. 
Then Tonty was again alarmed by rumors of dis- 
aster to La Salle, that began to fill the wilderness. 
These stories, which, by ways that are not much 
understood by us, had traveled, as did all news 
through the wilderness in those days, with won- 
derful rapidity and singular general accuracy, be- 
came so insistent that Tonty determined to go to 
Mackinac for information. There, at that great 
clearing-house of the wilderness, his fears were to 
some degree heightened by what he heard, know- 

* Mason : "Land of the Illinois." 



102 Starved Rock 

ing as he did that La Salle had sailed for the mouth 
of the Mississippi. On the other hand, Tonty 
learned there with deep satisfaction, no doubt, 
that La Barre had been dismissed in disgrace and 
that the Marquis de Denonville had, on August 
13, 1685, succeeded him as governor of Canada. 
He was also told that the trader Holland had 
brought word for Tonty to proceed to Montreal 
to consult with the governor upon the conduct of 
a projected expedition against the Iroquois. Ton- 
ty, however, felt it his first duty to find and, if 
need be, relieve La Salle. Therefore, on Novem- 
ber 30, he left Mackinac in a canoe for the Eock, 
which after much suffering, relieved in a meas- 
ure by the Jesuits at Chicago, he reached in 
January, 1686. Before proceeding further he 
sought and found Rolland, from whom he had as- 
surances of Denonville 's good will toward the Illi- 
nois establishment ; and the knowledge of this fact 
did much to restore confidence and bring content 
to the colonists about the Rock, as well as to leave 
the way open to Tonty to take up the quest for La 
Salle. 

In February, then, nothing further having been 
heard of La Salle, Tonty determined to go to the 
Gulf in search of him. La Forest came west from 
Fort Frontenac to take command at Fort St. 
Louis during Tonty 's absence, and on February 



Tonty 103 

16, with twenty-five Frenchmen^ and four Sha- 
wanoes, Tonty set out from the Rock for the low- 
er Mississippi. In Holy Week, just three years 
to a day from that one on which La Salle in 1683 
had set up the royal arms and pronounced his 
proclamation of occupation, Tonty and his party 
were at the mouth of the Mississippi. But there 
was no sign of La Salle. They searched the coun- 
try on either bank for many miles without obtain- 
ing any information, and then reluctantly Tonty 
turned his face homeward. At an Indian village 
near where they re-erected the royal arms, Tonty 
gave to a chief a letter to La Salle, in the event of 
a meeting, which the Indian preserved faithfully 
for fourteen years and then delivered to D 'Iber- 
ville who then ascended the river to take up the 
task of working out the colonial policy that La 
Salle had conceived and had died to inaugurate. 

At the mouth of the Arkansas, where La Salle 
had granted a seigniory to Tonty, ten of the lat- 
ter 's men now elected to settle; and Tonty gave 
them the lands they wished and built them a house 
surrounded with a palisade.f On June 24, the 



* In this party were the surgeon Jean Michel, who had been with 
La Salle to the Gulf, and Rene Cuillerier, a famous name at Montreal, 
an ancestor of the Chicago Beaubiens. 

fDouay says (Le Clerc: "First Establishment of the Faith in New 
France") that Couture "told us the Sieur de Tonty had stationed them 
there to serve as an intermediate station to aid the Sieur de la Salle 
and to maintain an alliance with the tribes and to shield them against 
attacks by the Iroquois." 



104 Starved Rock 

femainder of the party reached the liock, all glad 
enough to take a long rest. 

Tonty was the sole exception. Having persuad- 
ed two Illinois chiefs to go with him, he proceeded 
at once to answer the summons of Benonville sent 
through Holland to meet him at Montreal, which 
place Tonty reached at the end of July— a month 
of strenuous paddling, indeed. The conference 
concluded, Tonty and the Illinois returned at once, 
and beached their canoes at the base of the Rock 
early in December— making for Tonty a record of 
canoe traveling for the ten months of about five 
thousand miles. 

Uenonville was a different type of governor 
from La Barre. At least, he appreciated the polit- 
ical and economic conditions menacing the French 
interests in Canada from the direction of Albany, 
daily growing more serious. The activity of the 
English in the Mohawk Valley and especially their 
ambitious incursions into the heart of the fur 
country, making necessary the placing by Du Lhut 
of a fort at the outlet of Lake Huron into St. Clair 
River, had aroused Henonville to defensive activ- 
ity. In 1G86 the English traders, already estab- 
lished on Hudson Bay, menaced from New York 
even Mackinac and French coimnunications with 
the Upper Country and might have proved formid- 
able but for the activity of Du Lhut, who stopped 



Tonty lOf) 

and turned biU-k one considcraljlc party who had 
all l)nt escaped his keen vii;ihinee. in Dongan, too, 
governor of New York, a man who understood l^a 
Salle's plans fully and knew the need of a prompt 
counter movenK^nt, Denonville found a rival wc^U 
worth his attention, as the spirited correspondence 
])etween them amply attests. If France and Eng- 
hind W(M'e then at peace, as it so happened, for 
King William's War did not begin until 1689, there 
W(»re still the common disturbances of the frontier 
to oft'er a pretext; and as the Iroquois were '^Eng- 
lish Indians,'' a stroke at the English might be 
made over the shoulders of the Iroquois. So, very 
early in his administration, as we have seen, De- 
nonville had planned a pTinitive expedition against 
the Iroquois, whose arrogance, since the shameful 
})(*ac(^ made with them by La Barren when he a])an- 
doned the Illinois and Port St. Louis to their fury, 
had made the Five Nations a constant menace to 
the settlements on the St. Lawrence also. The 
snnmier of 1686 was, therefore, spent in mobiliz- 
ing an army from the forts to take the field the 
following year; and he had called for aid upon 
all the western posts: Dorvilliers, La Forest's suc- 
cessor at Frontenac; De Lhut at Fort St. Joseph 
at tlu^ foot of Lake Huron; Durantaye at Macki- 
nac, and La Forest at the Rock, as well as from 
the colonies on the St. Lawrence. Denonville in 



106 Stai'ved Rock 

writing La Forest at the Rock on June 6, 1686, 
asking for aid in the coming campaign, suggested 
that if Tonty should return from the lower Missis- 
sippi, which he doubted would be the case, he 
should conmiand the contingent from Fort St. 
Louis, otherwise La Forest himself should under- 
take that duty. Tonty, as we have seen, not only 
did return, but was able the same fall to meet De- 
nonville in Montreal and give him valuable advice 
relative to the conduct of the expedition. 

On his return to the Rock in December, Tonty 
sent out runners to the western tribes, inviting 
them to join in the campaign the following spring. 
Accordingly the Indians assembled near the Rock 
in April, 1687. Tonty welcomed and entertained 
them most satisfactorily with a dog feast, a func- 
tion which Sabastien Rale, the missionary, in a 
letter* to his nephew says, ^^ passes among the In- 
dians for a most magnificent festival, and is there- 
fore called the Feast of the Chiefs." La Forest 
had already departed from the Rock with thirty 
Frenchmen in canoes, agreeing to meet Tonty on 
the upper St. Clair River; and on April 17, 
Tonty followed on foot, overland, with sixteen 
Frenchmen and one hundred and forty-nine Illi- 
nois warriors, the Rock with twenty men having 
been left in the command of Sieur de Bellefon- 
taine. 



* Kip : "The Early Jesuit Missions in North America." 



Toutij 107 

Deiionville began his campaign in 1687 by a tre- 
mendons blnnder, having in Jnne treacherously 
seized at Fort Frontenac certain Iroquois whom 
he had himself invited there on the pretext of a 
friendly conference. That base act concluded, he 
assembled his various detachments of soldiers,' 
voyageurs and Indian allies on July 10 at Ironde- 
quoit on Lake Ontario— two thousand fighting 
men all told— and took the command in person. 
On July 12, he proceeded to the Seneca villages 
where a sharp engagement took place, in which 
the skill in Indian warfare and the bravery of the 
men of the West under Tonty, La Forest, Duran- 
taye* and Du Lhut, saved the day. The Iroquois 
were routed and severely chastised and their vil- 
lages burned and crops destroyed. The western 
commanders all were rewarded, Tonty and La 
Forest being recommended to the home govern- 
ment for the rewards due their prowess and val- 
uable services ; and the Iroquois never afterwards 
successfully raided the Illinois. 

After the battle Tonty and Du Lhut and their 
men started for the West in canoes, while the In- 
dians returned across the countrv, bearing the 



* With this mention Durantaye disappears from this narrative. He 
was born at Nantes in 1641 ; came to Canada with his regiment ; retired 
from Mackinac (1683-89) and aided in Frontenac's War. He was 
esteemed the best soldier of his time in the colony. He died in 1717, 
leaving descendants who still live in Canada. 



108 Starved Roch 

scalps of the slain. At DiiLlmt's Fort St. Jo- 
seph, at the foot of Lake Huron, Tonty met Father 
Gravier, the missionary to the Illinois, ^Yitll whom 
he proceeded via Mackinac to the Rock which they 
reached on October 27. 

Here on ascending the Rock Tonty met a re- 
markable group of strangers, being none other 
than the Abbe Cavelier, La Salle's older brother; 
young Cavelier, his nephew; Father Anastase 
Douay, a Recollet friar ; Teissier, a marine ; and a 
faithful officer of La Salle's soldiery in Louisiana, 
named tienri de Joutel, the chronicler of La Salle's 
fatal voyage and his death— the remnants of the 
colony of men, women and children who sailed with 
La Salle from Rochelle on July 2i, 1684. They 
had made their way, after La Salle's murder, 
across Texas and Arkansas to the mouth of the 
Arkansas River where they fortunately met Sieurs 
Couture and De Launay who, with the Indians of 
the neighborhood, gave them a welcome and shel- 
ter in La Salle's name, and, who when their guests 
had recovered their strength, sent them forward 
to the Rock, where they arrived in the early after- 
noon of Sunday, September 14, 1687. The Sha- 
wanoe runner Tupin, who had met them at Lake 
Peoria and understood that La Salle himself was 
in the party, had already announced their coming ; 
and *' drawing near, we were met by some Indians 



Tontij 109 

that were on the bank, who/' sa,vs Joutel, ''hav- 
ing viewed us well, and understanding that we 
came from La Salle, and that we belonged to him, 
ran to the Fort to carry the news ; and immediate- 
ly we saw a Frenchman come out with a company 
of Indians who tired a volley of several pieces to 
welcome us." 

Upon landing the travelers were at once asked 
where La Salle was; but' as the Abbe Cavelier 
feared he might lose the advantage of his rela- 
tionship to La Salle if his death were known, they 
had previously determined to conceal the fact of 
his death until they had arrived again in France. 
^^We told them," continues Joutel, ^'that he had 
brought us part of the way, etc., and that he was 
then in good health. All that was true enough: 
for M. Cavelier and I, who thus spoke, were not 
present at La Salle's death. It is no less true that 
Father Anastasius [Douay] and he they call Teis- 
sier could have given a better account, the one as 
an eye-witness and the other as one of the murder- 
ers [accessory before the fact], and they were both 
with us." Accepting Abbe Cavelier 's word as the 
whole truth. Belief ontaine, Tonty's lieutenant in 
command, gave them hearty welcome and con- 
ducted them to the cha]:)el within the Fort, where 
a Te Deuni was sung in thanksgiving. ''All this 
while," says Joutel, "the natives came by inter- 



110 starved Bock 

vals to fire their pieces to express their joy for 
our return and for the news we brought of M. de 
La Salle, which refreshed our sorrow for his mis- 
fortune, perceiving that his presence would have 
settled all things advantageously." They saw, too, 
that if they had at once told the truth here was 
spirit enough to have rescued the unfortunate peo- 
ple they had left behind them; but they learned 
the value of truth, as many others also do, when it 
was too late— their lie had closed their mouths and 
many needlessly suffered. 

The Abbe's party desired to move on as soon as 
possible for Quebec, and Boisrondet furnished 
them with a canoe for the purpose. They gath- 
ered provisions for the journey and took furs to 
trade at Mackinac ; and thus provisioned they set 
out, in the company of three voyageurs who had 
stopped at the Rock on their way to Mackinac; 
but encountering only foul weather, they were un- 
able to navigate the lake and so they cached their 
goods at Chicago and returned to the Rock to 
spend the winter. Joutel expresses regret at this 
necessity because it would by so much delay the 
succors they had intended to send ^^to those French 
of our own company whom we had left on the coast 
of the Bay of Mexico." 

Thus it was that Tonty was able to meet them 
in October and to act as their host during the 



Tonty 111 

winter; and the leisure Joutel thereafter enjoyed 
gave him opi3ortunity to make notes of his obser- 
vations on the Eock and the French residing there. 
^'Fort Louis," he says, ^4s only fortified with 
stakes and palisades, and some houses advancing 
to the edge of the Rock. It has a very spacious 
esplanade, or place of arms. The place is nat- 
urally strong, and might be made so by art with 
very little expense. Several of the natives live in 
it in their huts. I cannot give an account of the 
latitude it stands in, but nothing can be pleasant- 
er." He is very enthusiastic about the hunting, 
the beauty of the scenery, the temperate climate, 
the abundance of timber, of fruits and nuts and 
grass and building materials and coal, the fertil- 
ity of the soil. *' Whatever is sown grows there, 
whether herbs, roots, Indian and even European 
corn [wheat], as has been tried by M. Boisrondet, 
who sowed all sorts, and had a bountiful crop, and 
we ate of the bread, which was very good. ' ' 

To Tonty the same miserable subterfuges about 
La Salle were rehearsed, and he repeated the wel- 
come his lieutenant had already extended. And 
the Fort's population prepared for the winter. 

Tonty had l^rought with him to the Rock sev- 
eral Frenchmen, among whom was one of his cous- 
ins, Greysolon de la Tourette, a younger brother 
of DuLhut; and later in the autumn La Forest 



112 Starved Rock 

again came to the Fort to pass the winter. Still 
latei*, toward the end of December, two men in 
charge of the carriers who were bringing ammuni- 
tion and supplies from Montreal arrived and re- 
ported that they were unable to get further with 
their goods than La Salle's fort at Chicago; 
whereupon Tonty sent the Chief of the Shawa- 
noes with thirty of his people to bring the mer- 
chandise to the Rock, which they did. One of 
these Frenchmen was Sieur Juchereau de Saint 
Denis, then second in command at Mackinac, 
whom Tonty had invited to visit him in order to 
enjoy the hunting in a milder climate than Mack- 
inac can boast ; and if one may believe the chroni- 
clers of those days and the stories, of the later 
English settlers who succeeded the French in the 
occupancy of these same lands, so abundant was 
the game that many a merry group of hunters 
might have been seen after a day on the frozen 
river bringing back the light sledges well laden 
with deer and turkeys and other spoils of the chase. 
*^0f our living," says Joutel, ^^ there was no com- 
plaint to make, except that we had nothing but 
water to drink." 

The winter passed pleasantly enough, with 
hunting by day, and snug nights around the cabin 
fires of the Fort. There was the trading also to 
be attended to ; for Indians were all about them in 



Tonty 113 

their villages and the Rock was the central forti- 
hcatiou and trading headquarters for the tribes 
whom Franquelin locates on his map of La Salle's 
colony of 1683. There was some shifting always 
of Indian populations, of course; but the Indians 
of the Rock colony in 1687 were substantially the 
same as in 1683. The Miamis were located on 
Buffalo Rock, to the east two or three miles ; oth- 
ers of the same tribe were at Chicago ; others WTre 
at St. Joseph, and still others at Maramech, in 
northeastern Illinois as Franquelin locates it. J. 
F. Steward* locates- the site of this once some- 
what noted village on Fox River near Piano in 
Kendall county. Then there were the allied tribes 
of Mascoutins and Kickapoos on Rock River, who 
traded at the Rock or at Maramech with other 
tribes there who came to the Rock or met traders 
from the Rock. The great east-and-west trail, 
says Steward, crossed the Fox River at Maramech, 
while that village existed ; and there it crossed also 
the Kishwaukee trail, from the swamps of the 
northwest, over which were brought the furs most 
sought for by the traders. ^^ Although I have 
found but little authority for other than the river 
courses," says Steward, ^^I believe that not all the 
French goods were brought up the Fox River to 
Maramech and the other towns along the Fox Riv- 



* Steward; "Lost ^^aranlech and Earliest Chicago." 



114 Starved Rock 

er. Many were brought from Fort St. Louis that 
from its establishment by La Salle to about 1700 
was au entrepot: but much was carried from the 
lake near where is now Racine, to the little lakes 
where starts the Fox River." 

At Maramech, undoubtedly several trails met 
then as they did later. Over them moved the rov- 
ing tribes and bands of white and half-breed hunt- 
ers ; and the branch of the Miamis that were at the 
village and the traders lodged there received from 
the French posts the goods they needed. From the 
Rock the Maramech trail ran along the north side 
of Illinios River over the great prairie, or to the 
mouth of Fox River and then along the west bank 
of that stream, meeting at Maramech the trail to 
La Salle V fort at Chicago; and it is possible that 
when Tonty's faithful Shawanoes returned from 
Chicago, that cold January, heavily burdened with 
the ammunition and merchandise that had made 
three canoe loads on the lakes, they may have fol- 
lowed the trail to Maramech, on reaching which 
they could enjoy the hospitality of their Miami 
friends for a brief rest to break the killing fa- 
tigue of such a task of carrying in mid-winter. 

Though the snow lay thick that winter over the 
land of the Illinois, and the frost held the rivers 
in its grip, ^' there Avas occasional excitement, 
moreover, at the departure and return of savage 



Tonty ' 115 

war parties which kept up the contest with the 
Iroquois. In the month of January (1688) alone 
the Abbe Cavelier saw thirteen such expeditions 
of Illinois Indians set out from Fort St. Louis, 
two of forty and eleven of twenty warriors each, 
or three hundred in all. The Miamis put in the 
field one band of eighty and several smaller ones, 
while the Shawanoes sent several, numbering one 
hundred and fifty in all. At least one of the Illi- 
nois parties returned to the Fort with Iroquois 
prisoners, of whom six were made slaves and six 
were burned at the stake. During that winter 
and spring the Illinois furnished tangible proofs, 
presumably scalps, that they had put to death two 
hundred and forty persons among the Iroquois in 
their own land.* Tonty relates that the Five Na- 
tions attempted to make reprisals, but were val- 
iantly withstood by the Illinois who had greatly 
improved in the art of war under French guidance, 
and who so harried the Senecas that this tribe 
was obliged to remain in its villages all winter and 
refrain from raids upon the Canadian settlements. 
Furthermore, he says, ^^Our Illinois have captured 
and brought to Fort St. Louis eighty Iroquois 
slaves." And he adds, with a ferocious exultation 
for which his time and situation were responsible, 
^Sve have made a good ])roiling of them." 



* ]\f ARGRY : Mason's paraphrase in "Land of the Illinois." 



116 Starved Roch 

One might dwell longer upon the life at the Rock 
during this winter of 1687-88, for it was the most 
comfortable and relaxing resting time the inde- 
fatigable Tonty had enjoyed in many years. Here 
among his friends, gentlemen of his own country 
and class, his apprehensions as to La Salle set at 
rest by the equivocations of the Abbe Cavelier and 
his companions, assured of the protection and co- 
operation of a colonial government to which he 
had just rendered a signal service, with his sav- 
age allies at peace among themselves and devoted 
to his service, and the trading post piling up riches 
in peltry held in trust against his patron's return 
to the Rock to claim his own, Tonty had every rea- 
son to be at his ease and to rest in the confidence 
that La Salle's plans, political and commercial, 
with which he was in full sympathy, were upon the 
eve of their consummation. 

And so the winter passed, agreeably enough to 
all who were at the Rock, then at the very height 
of its prestige, its power and its material pros- 
perity. The unscrupulous Abbe was no doubt an 
exception to the general content that everywhere 
surrounded him. Although the Abbe had not hesi- 
tated to tell Couture and DeLaunay on the Ar- 
kansas of La Salle's fate, when the fugitives came 
to the Rock and met Tonty face to face, '^that brave 
gentleman who was always inseparably attached 



Tonty 117 

to the interest of the Sieur de la Salle," they con- 
cealed the facts, ''it being our duty," adds Douay,* 
''to give the first news to the court." Very natur- 
ally the Abbe dreaded the possibility that Cou- 
ture and l)e Launay might come to the Rock and 
expose his duplicity and bring upon himself and 
his party the wrath and well deserved contempt 
of their generous host. 

The Abbe, therefore, prepared to leave the Rock 
at the first sign of spring; and when March 31 
came, having obtained from Tonty on La Salle's 
account the necessary funds for the journey to 
France and 2,652 livres (francs) in payment of 
La Salle's debt to his brother, the Abbe with the 
little party started from the Rock for Quebec and 
France, accompanied by Boisrondet, one of the 
most faithful of La Salle's men, who after many 
years in the wilderness was going home to a well 
earned and well deserved rest. They took with 
them five Indians,— one from a Missouri tribe, 
^^who had learned to speak French and had been 
baptised," says Joutel,^ 'but was no better Christian 
for all that." After many adventures by the way, 
the entire party landed safely at Rochelle on Octo- 
ber 9, 1688. Boisrondet went to his native village 
of Orleans, taking the young Indian convert with 
him; Joutel and two Illinois remained at Rouen, 



Le Clerq: "First Establishment of the Faith in New France. 



118 Starved Rock 

while Douay, the Abbe and two Indians went to 
Paris and made their report— too late to save a 
single soul alive of the Texas colony, had the 
government been disposed to attempt the succor 
of the unfortunates, which it was not. The Indians 
were eventually returned to Canada. 

It was not until the following September (1688) 
that Tonty learned the truth concerning La Salle, 
when Couture came to the Rock from the Arkan- 
sas. We may imagine Tonty 's wrath and indigna- 
tion, and also his deep regret that he could not have 
gone, a year before, to the rescue of the unhappy 
colony. It might not be too late, even now, he 
thought ; and to think was to act. He started Cou- 
ture for Montreal to obtain Denonville's permis- 
sion to attempt the rescue; but unfortunately an 
accident compelled Couture to return to the Rock 
with his mission unexecuted. Tonty had, however, 
in the meantime received word from Denonville 
that there was peace with the Iroquois and war 
with Spain. This news left Tonty free to act on 
his own account. He had already sent De la Tou- 
rette in advance as hunter to provision the expedi- 
tion ; but when La Forest did not appear to take 
command at the Rock during his absence, Tonty 
made De la Tourette, ^'an intelligent lad," com- 
mander ; while he himself with five Frenchmen and 
a Shawanoe, with other Indians, on December 3, 



Tonty 119 

left the Rock for the Gulf in a pirogue, or canoe 
made from a log. 

The details of this journey need not detain us 
here ; suffice it to say that Tonty accomplished noth- 
ing by the quest save that he Avas able to ease his 
own conscience with the thought that he had done 
his utmost to save those, some of whom he might 
perhaps have saved had the Abbe Cavelier been 
truthful when he first reached the Rock; but he 
was able to find his own rest only after sufferings 
the most intense he had ever experienced; and it 
was late in the same year (1688) that he was able 
again to reach the Rock which continued to be his 
home for the next twelve years. 

After the death of La Salle Fort St. Louis— the 
Rock— continued to be the center of French power 
and influence in the Mississippi Valley for at least 
a decade. Tonty remained in command by virtue 
of the King's order of 1685, and he exercised a 
wide jurisdiction. When, however, the Company 
of Foot in which he held his commission as captain 
(without pay, for he never received any) was dis- 
banded, being without employment as a soldier, 
he addressed a petition to the Minister, Count de 
Pontchartrain, reciting his services in the West 
and asking for a new command. The petition being 
glowingly endorsed by Count Frontenac, again 
governor of Canada, who always took thought for 



120 Starved Rock 

ills friends and the men faithful to the government, 
Tonty, jointly with La Forest, was granted the 
proprietorship of Fort St. Louis, where they car- 
ried on a profitable trade in peltries for some years ; 
La Forest trading at the Chicago post and Tonty 
at the Rock. 

In 1699, when the other forts in the West were 
ordered abandoned, an exception was made in fa- 
vor of Fort St. Louis. Tonty and La Forest were 
permitted to bring from Montreal annually two 
canoes of goods and twelve men were allowed for 
maintenance of the Fort. These concessions were 
as much a matter of state policy as of favor to two 
faithful servants of the government, however ; for 
Frontenac, at least, expansionist as he was and 
ever had been, realized better than did the court 
that the English traders and settlers were crossing 
the Alleghenies and making permanent homes in 
the great valleys claimed by the French; and he 
knew what that meant to the fortunes of New 
France. As proAdncial governor he understood 
fully the scope of La Salle's policy and approved 
it ; but in the face of the complaints of the church 
of libertinage in the woods and of debauchery at 
the forts, Frontenac was able only with difficulty to 
retain garrisons at some of the forts in the West, 
most important of which, after Mackinac, he esti- 
mated Fort St. Louis, which was the sole point 



Tonty 121 

from which to resist the entrance of the English 
into the West. Tonty also, trained to La Salle's 
policy and plan of possession, and having the most 
intimate knowledge of conditions in the West, as 
well as being himself a trained strategist, saw that 
the ^^ English peril" to the great valley, already 
confronting his government, was more real than 
the court was willing to concede ; and it was on his 
urgent advice to the government that Pierre le 
Moyne, Sieur d' Iberville, was sent to take posses- 
sion of the mouth of the Mississippi, which he did 
just in time; for the English had themselves de- 
cided to do this, and their ships, two years later, ac- 
tually appeared in the Gulf for that purpose. 

In 1699 an expedition under Montigny, with St. 
Cosme* as ^^ black gown" and historian attached, 
made a journey of political enquiry to the Missis- 
sippi. At the Rock in November they obtained the 
services of Tonty as guide, who went with them as 
far as the mouth of the Arkansas, impressing 
them the while, as he did all with whom he came 
in contact, that no man then knew the .country bet- 
ter or as well as he, nor was more ^^ beloved and 



*St. Cosme (Jean Francois Buisson de) with Francoise Jolliet de 
Montigny and Antoine Dairon were selected in the autumn of 1698 to 
open a mission in the west for the Seminary. He was a Canadian, 
born in February. 1667; ordained at the age of 23. He labored at 
Cahokia and at Natchez: and while on a voyage down the Mississippi 
was murdered by Chetimachas late in the year 1702. — 65 Jesuit 
Relations, 262. 



122 Starved Rock 

» 

feared by all the tribes." St. Cosme says of hiin: 
''I cannot, Monseigneur [the Bishop of Quebec], 
express our obligations to him; he guided us as far 
as the Arkansas, and gave us much pleasure on the 
way. He facilitated our course through several 
nations, winning us the friendship of some and 
intimidating those who from jealousy or desire of 
plunder had wished to oppose our voyage ; he has 
not only done the duty of a brave man, but also 
discharged the functions of a zealous missionary. 
He quieted the minds of our employes in the little 
vagaries they might have ; he supported us by his 
example in the exercises of devotion which the 
voyage permitted us to perform, very often ap- 
proaching the Sacrament." 

Tonty returned to Fort St. Louis and to the con- 
duct of his business as a fur trader, but the others 
went on to the Gulf. 

Again in 1700 Father Gravier made and recorded 
his impressions of a similar journey for a similar 
purpose. He observed that the Englishmen were 
already in the Tennessee country, and were trading 
with the Mohegans and other Indians who had been 
driven westward by approaching English settle- 
ments. He found English guns among all the na- 
tives. The Father is not sure there is danger in 
this, however. ^^I do not know what our court will 
decide about the Mississippi, if no silver mines are 



Tonty 123 

found,'' he says; "for our government does not 
seek lands to cultivate.''" 

In spite of these signals of a coming struggle, 
the court soon after decided upon its course. 
Frontenac was dead (Xovember 25, 1698), and a 
new party was in control in Xew France. The ag- 
gressive policy of the great governor and of his 
brilliant lieutenants. La Salle, Tonty, La Forest, 
Du Lhut, Perrot, Cadillac, etc., was reversed. Cal- 
lieres, Frontenac 's successor, while firm enough as 
regards the Iroquois, had but a faint grasp of the 
French problem in America, and so was disposed 
to abandon rather than to continue activity in the 
^Vest. His policy was to let the Indians fight their 
own battles, and by withdrawing the officers from 
the forts thus compel the Indians to go to Mon- 
treal to trade. And yielding to the governor's rep- 
resentations, ^Hhe court at Versailles gave orders 
in conformity thereto: and from all the Upper 
County,! first, and from Fort St. Louis, last of all, 
the traders were summoned, conc'es revoked, and 



*La Sueur (Pierre Charles) also, in 1699, found an Englishman at 
the mouth of the Arkansas, "for even in this closing year of the 
seventeenth century English rivalry had commenced on the lower 
Mississippi." — Thwaites : "France in America." 

t As to the abandonment of Mackinac and the other advanced posts. 
Charlevoix (Vol. 4, p. 276. "History of Xew France," Shea's transla- 
tion) says he does not know who was responsible for it, but of its un- 
wisdom he says : "The excursions of the Canadians into new coun- 
tries certainly ruined the commerce of Xew France, rendered the na- 
tion contemptible among all the tribes on the continent, and raised an 



124 Starved Rock 

officer's ordered home." This order came to La 
Forest at Fort St. Louis in 1702, directing him to 
return to Canada and Tonty to join D 'Iberville on 
the Mississippi, whither Tonty had already gone 
(1700) with twenty men. 

And thus it was that ^' Tonty finally passed from 
the country of the Illinois, where he had been a 
conspicuous and honorable figure for twenty years 
and had achieved for himself a name which will 
outlast the effacing fingers of time."* 

The decline of the Rock in commercial impor- 
tance followed the order to abandon the Fort and 
was due to the opening made in consequence of it 
of a new outlet for the furs of the Upper Country 
by way of the Mississippi (to which Charlevoix 
referred in note above) and to the closing of the 
Wisconsin River waterway by the hostile Foxes. 



insurmountable obstacle to the progress of religion. Still, the reme- 
dies which his majesty sought to apply were utterly impracticable in 
the actual position of the colony, since it is certain that the English 
would have seized the advance posts as soon as we evacuated them, 
and we should thus at once have had all the tribes gathered near 
the posts by our influence. Now if these tribes were joined to the Iro- 
quois and the English, one single campaign would suffice to expel the 
French from New France." 

* Wallace : "Illinois and Louisiana Under French Rule." — Tonty 
died of yellow fever at Mobile in 1704. Tonty may be called the Father 
of Louisiana, being the first man after La Salle to urge the settlement 
of the lower INIississippi. It was through him that English control 
of that part of our country was postponed for over a hundred years, or 
until the purchase by Jefferson. "France obtained, under Providence, 
the guardianship of Louisiana, not, as it proved, for its own benefit, 
but rather as a trustee for the infant nation by which it was one day 
to be inherited." — Bancroft : "History of U. S." 



Tonty 125 

The Yoyageurs had refused to obey the order of 
Governor CalHeres to return to Canada with 
the officers; and going down the Mississippi 
thev joined the settlers in their new locations— at 
Cahokia, originally the mission to the Tamaroas, 
founded by Father Pinet in 1698; at Kaskaskia, 
founded in 1700; and at the mouth of the Ohio, 
where in 1702 Juchereau de St. Denis placed a trad- 
ing post, all of which settlements looked to the new 
settlements on the Gulf as their entrepot for sup- 
plies and as outlets for their products in exchange. 
The commerical effect of this change in the current 
of the trade of the Upper Country was immediately 
felt in Canada, whose merchants saw a commercial 
rival rising in the West ; but of the political conse- 
quences involved the government then had little 
suspicion. 

The Rock remained, however, for many years 
thereafter the rendezvous of licensed and illicit 
traders ; in fact, it never has been without its white 
occupants, literally or as trappers abiding in its 
immediate vicinity, from Marquette's day to this. 
In 1718 it had again a quasi-official recognition as 
the authorized home of French traders from Can- 
ada, but the old trade of the Rock had gone to the 
]\Iississippi permanently ; and when in 1721 Charle- 
voix made the Rock a visit, he found only the ruins 
of its palisades and rough cabins. 



126 



Starved Bock 



And so for tlie moment we, too, will abandon 
the Rock, while waiting for the shifting from the 
East to the West of the scene of the great drama of 
the conflict of France and England for the posses- 
sion of North America, when Starved Rock again 
becomes the center of interest in the "West. 




lookino from starved eock 
Eastward. 



THE MISSION. 

"Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam." 

— Motto of Society of Jesus. 

The bells of the Roman mission 

That call from their turrets twain 
To the boatman on the river, 

To the hunter on the plain. 

—Whit tier. 

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 

The earlier Catholic missionaries to the Indians 
of North America were to a degree distinguished 
for ^^leroic self-devotion, energy of purpose, purity 
of motive, holiness of design." Nowhere can be 
found ^^more that is sublime even to eyes blinded by 
the glare of human greatness" than in the biog- 
raphies of these martyrs of the American wilder- 
ness. Parkman's volume, ^'The Jesuits in North 
America," is a most dramatic recital of Christian 
heroism and zeal which has not been surpassed by 
any age of the church in any clime. The ^^ apostles 
to the heathen" who sacrificed all things, suffered 
all things, endured all things, had not all passed 
from earth until these men, at least, had met death 
for Christ's sake and His church. 

The missionaries to the West were no less famous 
than those who immortalized themselves among the 

127 



128 Starved Bock 

Iroquois and the savages of Maine. They were 
*^ among the best and purest of their order, burning 
with zeal for the salvation of souls and the gain- 
ing of an immortal croAvn," and they ^^ toiled and 
suffered with self-sacrificing devotion which ex- 
torts a tribute of admiration even from sectarian 
bigotry. While the colder apostles of Protestantism 
labored upon the outskirts of heathendom, these 
champions of the Cross pierced the very heart of its 
dark and dreary domain, confronting death at every 
step and well repaid for all could they but sprinkle 
a few drops of water on the forehead of a dying 
child or hang a gilded crucifix round the neck of 
some warrior,"* pleased with but unappreciative 
of the significance of the gift. 

"We have seen how Marquette longed to preach 
to the Illinois. As early as 1670, while at the Sault, 
he studied the Illinois dialects with an Illinois cap- 
tive in order to go to them in their own country. 
We have seen, too, how when he visited them with 
Jolliet at their great town, called Kaskaskia, near 
Fort St. Louis, they made him promise to return 
and instruct them. It was, then, as a blessed privi- 
lege, that in the fall of 1674, while at St. Xavier, he 
received the order to establish a mission among the 
Illinois. 

Accordingly, on October 25, thinking himself 



* Parkman : "Conspiracy of Pontiac. 



The Mission 129 

well enough to do so, he left the mission at St. Xav- 
ier for the Illinois. He had as his companions two 
Frenchmen, one of whom had been with him and 
JoUiet in 1673, and at Sturgeon Bay they were 
joined by several canoes of Illinois and Pottawat- 
omies. Coasting Lake Michigan at that season, in 
a frail canoe proved, however, so exhausting a task 
that on reaching Chicago River, which he did on 
December 4, Marquette's old malady, dysentery 
with hemorrhage, had returned, and he was com- 
pelled to remain at the portage for the winter. The 
season was very severe, and Marquette's home was 
but a miserable cabin of some unknown trapper or 
fur trader, located near the portage to the Des- 
plaines, some two miles up the river.* Here he was 
ministered to by his men and by the sympathetic 
Indians, as well as by roving woodsmen, as best 
they could. Although he gained little strength dur- 
ing the winter, when early spring came (March 29, 
1675), he resumed his journey, reaching the Ill- 
inois town on April 8. Sick unto death, he never- 
theless proceeded with his long sought duty, and 
founded his mission, to which he gave his favorite 
name, ^^ Immaculate Conception of the Blessed 
Virgin, "t the first Christian church planted in 



* A simple marker has lately beeh erected, in the form of a cross, 
to indicate the supposed site of this cabin. 

t Marquette: "Unfinished Diary," the water-stained MSS. of which 
is now held as a sacred relic at St. Mary's College, Montreal. 



130 Starved Rock 

the Misissippi Valley, which through many vicis- 
situdes of time and place has never wholly ceased 
to be. But as continued illness brought the reali- 
zation that his end was approaching, he cut short 
his work through physical inability to continue it. 
For several days he taught the Indians in their 
cabins and in the coundl, and on Holy Thursday 
he preached to the assembled tribes to the number 
of two thousand on the meadow near the town, 
where he had erected a rude altar and exhibited 
pictures of the Virgin, explaining their significance 
and exhorting with rare eloquence the chiefs and 
the people to embrace Christianity. 

This was the end of his life's work. Knowing 
death to be near to him and desiring to die if pos- 
sible at St. Ignace, immediately after Easter 
(April 14 that year) he bade his loved Illinois 
farewell, and sustained by his faithful companions, 
painfully made his way toward the north, taking 
the route via the Kankakee and St. Joseph Rivers 
and the eastern shore. 

After infinite suffering by Marquette, only 
slightly relieved by the devotion of his men, the 
party at length reached the mouth of Marquette 
River, or inlet, where now is the city of Ludington, 
Mich. He had spoken much of his approaching 
end ^Svith so great tranquillity and presence of 
mind that one might have supposed that he was 



The Mission 131 

concerned with the death of some other person and 
not his own''; and seeing here an ^^ eminence that 
he deemed well suited to the place of his inter- 
ment," he told his people that ^Hhat was the place 
of his last repose." There on May 18, 1675, Mar- 




Approximate Site of the Mission- of the Immaculate 
Conception to the Illinois. 

quette died, passing to his rest ^^with a counte- 
nance beaming and all aglow." He expired with- 
out a struggle ^^and so gently it might have been 
regarded as a pleasant sleep."* 



* Dablon : ••Relation of 167l 



132 Starved Roch 

His body was buried as he had directed, at a 
spot overlooking the lake; but a year later his 
Indian friends from Mackinac removed the bones 
to St. Ignace where they were again buried with 
some ceremony in a vault made under the floor of 
the log chapel. In the process of time, this mis- 
sion having been abandoned, the log church was 
burned in 1700, and Marquette's resting place was 
forgotten. It was discovered, however, in 1877 by 
Rev. Father Edward Jacker, a missionary in 
charge at St. Ignace, through whose activity a 
monument has since been erected to the devoted 
priest's memory. Some parts of his remains still 
repose at St. Ignace, while others are at Marquette 
College, Milwaukee.* 

Thus died at the age of thirty-eight one of the 
noblest and purest men whose names adorn the 
annals of the Northwest. A man of cheerful, joy- 
ous disposition, playful in his manner, '^ whose let- 
ters show us a man of education, close observation, 
sound sense and a freedom from exaggeration," 
while yet a vein of humor breaks out in spite of 
his self-command. t His unselfish and saintly 
life is still an * inspiration to men of every creed 
and calling," while his accomplishments as a 
scholar and energy as a man of action mark him as 
one of the rare men of his age. 



*Thwaites: "Father Marquette. 
fKiP: "Early Jesuit Missions." 



The Mission 133 

After Marquette died Father Daloes charged 
himself with the Illinois mission. Father Marest 
in a letter to Father Germon, dated November 9, 
1712, written at Kaskaskia (on the Alississippi) , 
says Father Daloes '*was acquainted with the lan- 
guage of the Miamis, which approaches very near- 
ly to that of the Illinois. He, however, made but 
a short sojourn, having the idea while there that 
he should be able to accomplish more in a different 
country, where indeed he ended his apostolic life." 
[No dates are given.] 

Two years after Marquette the indefatigable 
Claude Allouez was 

sent to the Kas- /^^O^C^ c/4^<^^^- 
k a s k i a mission, ^ ^ 

thus identifying with Starved Rock and the Illi- 
nois a name that is famous in the annals of the 
Northwest. Born at Toulouse, Father Allouez 
went to Canada in 1658, and as early as 1661 or 
1662 succeeded the aged Father Menard at the mis- 
sion at La Pointe on Chaquemagon Bay, at the ex- 
tremity of Lake Superior, the southern shore of 
which he exj)lored in part. In 1669 he was sent 
to the Mascoutins on Green Bay, establishing there 
the mission of St. Francis Xavier, where Be Pere, 
Wis., now stands. Later he preached to the Foxes 
on Wolf River, but he found them in an ill-humor 
with the French, and they received the Faith with 



134 Starved Bock 

shouts of derision, to the good Father's great dis- 
tress. When St. Lusson at the Sault made his 
proclamation of possession of the Northwest, it 
was Allouez who made the address to the Indians, 
a speech which is preserved by Dablon in the ^'Re- 
lation of 1671. ' ' 

In the fall of 1676, when at Green Bay, he re- 
ceived the order to go to the Illinois. He set out 
along the western shore of Lake Michigan, but he 
wintered on the way and did not reach the Illinois 
town until April 27, 1677, where he was lodged in 
the cabin of Marquette. He erected an altar in the 
house of the chief of the tribe he meant to interest ; 
and the sachems, with ''all the people, being there 
assembled, I told them," he reports, "the object of 
my coming among them, namely, to preach the true 
living and immortal God and His son Jesus Christ. 
They listened very attentively to my whole dis- 
course, and thanked me for the trouble I took for 
their salvation.'' 

He describes the town and its location as we have 
had it before, making the number of cabins three 
hundred and fifty-one. As to his work, he says 
that he relaid the foundation of the Illinois mis- 
sion by the baptism of thirty-five children and a 
sick adult who soon after died ; and that on May 3, 
1677, the feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross, 
he erected in the town a cross twenty-five feet high 



The Mission 135 

and chanted the Vexilla in the presence of ^^a great 
number of Illinois of all tribes. ' ' 

Father Allouez remained in the Illinois country 
for the remainder of his life ; but in 1679 he retired 
from the Illinois village at the advance of La Salle, 
for these men mutually disliked each other, and be- 
took himself to the Mascoutins at Chicago or to the 
Miamis or other tribes who liapj)ened to be in his 
neighborhood, remaining with them so long as La 
Salle himself was in the country. In 1684 he again 
came to the town and to the Rock with Durantaye, 
commandant at Mackinac, during De Baugis' com- 
mand. Again we find him there in 1687 when 
Cavelier, Douay and Joutel were at the Rock ; but 
as they reported La Salle to be on his way to the 
Fort, Allouez, although ill, retired among the 
Miamis. He may have returned after La Salle 's 
death became known. He died at Fort Miami in 
1690. 

Allouez was one of the ablest of all the Jesuits 
sent to the Illinois ; but he was a cold man, whose 
influence was due to his intellectual powers rather 
than to his ability to impress men with the love he 
really bore to the race. As a churchman of zeal 
and piety, he was inferior to none of his day ; while 
as an explorer his name will ever be renowned in 
the West. 

Although La Salle had an aversion to the Jesuits 



136 Starved Rock 

in general, who, he always believed, and with some 
reason, were hostile, if not actively his enemies, and 
a dislike to Allouez in particular, he was still a 
profoundly religious man, and was invariably ac- 
companied in his expeditions by the ^^ Black 
Gowns," notably the Eecollet fathers Gabriel de 
la Ribourde, Zenobius Membre and Louis Henne- 
pin. In the year 1680 the two former took up the 
work abandoned by Allouez (and by Father James 
Gravier, who, soon after Allouez retired before La 
Salle, made the Illinois a brief visit) and were with 
Tonty on the memorable day of the Iroquois at- 
tack. After their escape from the Iroquois, Tonty 
and his Frenclmien with the two Fathers em- 
barked, on September 18, for Green Bay. On the 
next day, when the men were repairing their in- 
jured canoe, the aged Father Ribourde retired 
apart to say his breviary; and while thus engaged, 
was set upon by a party of Kickapoos who ruth- 
lessly murdered him— the first martyr to the 
Church in the Mississippi Valley. 

It cannot be said that their mission was a suc- 
cess, in spite of their piety and zeal. They baptised 
some dying infants, but they made no adult con- 
verts. 

The real successor, therefore, of Father Allouez 
at Kaskaskia was Father Sebastien Rale,^ the most 



* So written by himself, although the name is variously spelled 
Rasles, Rasle, Ralle, Ralle, and Rallee. 



The Mission 137 

conspicuous and interesting figure among the later 
French- American Jesuits.^ He was sent to the 
Illinois from Quebec, embarking in August, 1681, 
and arriving in the spring of 1682. He was hearti- 
ly welcomed, and a great dog feast was served in 
his honor— the greatest his hosts could extend. 
The Faith made but little progress under his 
preaching, however, as he himself regretfully ad- 
mitted ; and after about two years he was recalled 
to Quebec and again sent to his original charge, 
the Abenakis on the Kennebec River. 

In a letter written long after his stay in the Ill- 
inois, it being dated October 15, 1723, at Nanrant- 
souak (now Norridgewock, Maine), Father Rale 
gives an interesting description of the habits and 
customs of the Illinois.f The country, too, at- 
tracted him. ^^Of all the nations in Canada," he 
says, ^Hhere are none who live in so great abun- 
dance of everything as the Illinois.'' Christianity 
he thinks would have made greater progress among 
the Illinois if polygamy had been permitted. The 
Indians all attended chapel services regularly, and 
even their medicine men sent their children ^^to be 
instructed and baptised. In this," he adds, ^^ con- 
sists the best fruits which our mission at first re- 
ceives among the Indians, and which is the most 



* Parkman : "Fifty Years of Conflict." 

t Kip : "Early Jesuit Missions in North America. 



138 Starved Rock 

certain; for among the great number of infants 
whom we baptise not a year passes but many die 
before they are able to use their reason. But even 
among the adults, the greater part are so fervent 
and so attached to the Prayer [Christianity] that 
they will suffer the most cruel death sooner than 
abandon it." One hapjjy circumstance he notes 
in favor of the Illinois : they are so far distant from 
Quebec they cannot obtain liquor (the one draw- 
back to life in Illinois noted by Joutel). 

Father Rale's career at Norridgewock is told in 
a spirited chapter by Parkman in his ^^ Fifty Years 
of Conflict." Rale was an intense partisan of 
France, and could not reconcile himself to the po- 
litical cession of his village and mission to the Eng- 
lish of Massachusetts; and in the course of the 
petty wars that ensued on the border, instigated 
in large measure by himself," he was killed during 
an attack on Norridgewock by the Massachusetts 
men in August, 1724. 

Father Rale is the ^^wear}^ priest" of Whittier's 
narrative poem, ^^Mogg Megone"— 

Ah, weary priest — with pale hands pressed 

On thy throbbing brow of pain, 
Baffled in thy life-long quest. 

Overworn with toiling vain. 



*Rale was the last of that devoted order, who in the wilds of 
America had labored to attain simultaneously two incompatible ob- 
jects — a spiritual kingdom for a heavenly Master, and a temporal one 
for an earthly sovereign. — Emma Willard: "History of the United 
States." 



The Mission 139 

How ill thy troubled musings fit 

The holy quiet of a breast 

With the Dove of Peace at rest, 
Sweetly brooding over it. 

After Father Rale, Allouez, as we have seen, re- 
turned and was a most attentive ministrant to the 
Kaskaskias, his absences being such as timed with 
the presence or anticipated coming of La Salle. 
Doubtless also the Abbe Cavelier and Father Douay 
exercised their priestly office during the winter of 
1687-88, when they were guests at the Rock. 

Father Gravier came a second time to the Kas- 
kaskia mission in March, 1684, and built a chapel 
within the Fort on Starved Rock, by Tonty's per- 
mission, probably the first chapel on the Rock. He 
also built a second chapel outside the Fort among 
the Indians, and ^^ planted before it a towering 
cross amid the shouts and musketry of the 
French." He remained in general charge of the 
mission until about February, 1694, when he was 
recalled to Mackinac. 

Father Gravier is regarded as the most success- 
ful missionary to the Illinois in their ancient seat. 
He first investigated the principles of their lan- 
guage and reduced them to grammatical rules, so 
that, says Father Marest, ^^we have since only been 
obliged to bring to perfection what he began with 
so great success." Father Gravier, as Marest 
further tells us, ^*had at first much to suffer from 



140 Starved Rock 

their medicine men, and his life was exposed to 
continual dangers ; but nothing repulsed him, and 
he surmounted all these obstacles by his patience 
and mildness.''* Although he made .among the 
Peorias a number of converts, who assembled even 
by themselves for morning and evening prayer, the 
head chief opposed him and the medicine men ac- 
cused him of poisoning the dying adults whom he 

baptised.! 

As a missionary to the Illinois, Father Gravier 
was not a little assisted by Mary, daughter of the 
head chief and the wife of Michael Ako, whom La 
Salle sent to the Mississippi, accompanied by 
Father Hennepin. On his return to the Illinois, 
Ako seems to have lived as a trader, probably in 
the employ of Tonty, at the Rock, or in the town, 
and wished to marry the Indian girl against her 
will but with her father's consent. Father Gravier 
sided with the maiden and suffered many indigni- 
ties therefor from both the Indians and the 
French. The chief abused the daughter also for 
her obstinacy, and not only ordered the converts 
to remain away from chapel services, but at- 
tempted to break up the latter by force. Mary at 
length yielded to her parent's wish in the hope that 
she might, by this self-sacrifice, be the means of 



*Kip: "Early Jesuit Missions." 

t Shea : "Catholic Missions to the Indian Tribes of the U. S. 



The Mission 141 

bringing both Ako and her parents into the fold of 
Christ. Ultimately her wish, we are told by Dr. 
Shea, in a sympathetic chapter,* was fully grati- 
fied, as she became the means of bringing not only 
Ako and her father, the chief, but many other souls 
to the church. Indeed, so great was the impulse to 
the good Father's work, given by these conversions 
through the instrumentality of Mme. Ako and her 
work among the children, that Father Gravier 
^^had three-fourths of the Kaskaskia village 
crowded into his cabin, young and old, chief and 
matrons, all ready to answer the questions of the 
Catechism and eager to receive a token of his ap- 
proval, while the children, day and night, sang in 
the streets of the village the h}Tims which he con- 
posed, embodying the truths of Christianity."! 
During eight months of 1693 he baptised two hun- 
dred and six souls, many of them infants, whom, 
we are told, ^^lie was enabled to bathe in the sac- 
ramental w^ater only by stratagem." 

Father Gravier when recalled to Mackinac was 



* Shea : "Catholic Missions," etc. 

t In the oldest record of the church found at [the new] Kaskaskia, 
the "Register of Baptisms of the Mission of the Illinois, of the title 
of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin," the first entry- 
bears date March 20, 1695. Retaining the French spelling of the names, 
it reads as follows: "In the year 1695, March 20th, I, Jacques Gravier. 
of the Society of Jesus, baptised Pierre Aco, newly-born of P. Michael 
Aco. Godfather was De Hautchy, godmother, Maria Aramipinchi- 
coue; Maria Joanna, grandmother of the child." — Breese: "Early- 
History of Illinois." 



142 Starved Boch 

succeeded by Fathers Binneteau and Pinet. Father 
Julien Binneteau, like Father Rale, came from the 
Abanakis of the Kennebec, where he was in 1693. 
He was on the St. Lawrence in 1694 and among 
the Illinois in 1695. They preached and taught 
among the various tribes at several points along 
the Illinois River. Father Pinet* founded the 
mission to the Tamaroas, near the mouth of Illi- 
nois River, now known as Cahokia. Father Marest 
in his letter! quoted above says that in company 
with Fathers Pinet and BinneteauJ he labored 



* Pinet (Pierre Francois) was born at Perigueux, France, Nov. 11, 
16G0; novitiate at Bordeaux in 1G82; went to Canada in 1G94. lit 
was first sent to IMackinac, but in 1G06 came to the Illinois, founding 
the mission of the Guardian Angel at Chicago among the Miamis. 
A year later the mission was broken up, when Father Pinct came to 
the Kaskaskias for a short time before founding a mission among the 
Tamaroas at Cahokia. This mission was ordered transferred from 
the Jesuits in 1G98 to the Seminary (Seminaire des Missions ]itran- 
geres), but Pinet remained among the Tamaroas until 1702, when he 
went to the Kaskaskias again, then at their new home on the Mis- 
sissippi. He died at Cahokia about 1704. — Tiiwattes: "Jesuit Re- 
lations," Vol. G4, p. 278. See also Shea: "Catholic Missions," etc. 

fKiP: "Jesuit Missions," etc. 

i" Julien Binneteau (Binteau) was born at La Flcche, France, on 
March 13, 1G53 ; was a Jesuit novitiate at Paris, 1G7G; instructor at 
Rouen, Nevers, Amiens, Caen; went to Canada in 1691; and was sent 
to Kaskaskia in 1G9G. He remained in the Illinois until his death on 
Dec. 24, 1G99. Father Binneteau was a victim of the migratory habits 
of the Indians whom he followed during the hunting seasons — the 
spring hunt of not to exceed three weeks; that of the winter, which 
lasted four to five months. Father Marest wrote to Father Germon, 
Nov. 9, 1712: — "He accompanied the savages in the greatest heat of 
July; sometimes he was in danger of smothering amid the grass which 
was extremely high; sometimes he suffered cruelly from thirst, not 
finding in the dried-up prairies a single drop of water to allay it. By 
day he was drenched with perspiration, and at night he was obliged 
to sleep on the ground, exposed to the dew and to many other in- 
conveniences, concerning which I will not go into detail. These hard- 
ships brought upon him a violent sickness, from which he expired in 
my arms."— Thwaites : "Jesuit Relations," Vols. 65 and 66. 



The Mission 143 

among the Illinois in the great town on the Illi- 
nois, "vcij former residence," for some time, or 
until their deaths, after which he remained in sole 
charge of the Kaskaskia mission on the Illinois un- 
til the coming to Kaskaskia [on the Mississippi] 
of Father Mermet. 

About 1700 Father Gravier made a voyage down 
the Mississippi from Mackinac via the Illinois. 
This voyage, as we saw in the previous chapter, 
was rather a political than a missionary jour- 
n(\v; but he waited at Biloxi for supplies from 
France for the missions on the Illinois, with which 
he returned to the Peorias, among whom he re- 
newed his work. 

On one occasion when the Indians were incited 
to a mutiny, the Father was dangerously wounded 
and narrowly escaped with his life. The account 
of this attack on Father Gravier is told by Father 
Mermet in a letter* to the Jesuits in Canada, un- 
der date March 2, 1706. It seems that the Peoria 
chiefs had agreed to send one of their number to 
Canada to the governor to account for the death 
of a soldier who had been killed by the Illinois; 
but when at Mackinac, while intending to go on 
with M. Desliettes (a relative of Henry de Tonty, 
whose family name was Desliettes, or Delietto), 
the chief and his companions learned that those 



'■' TiiwAiTiis ; "Jesuit Relations," Vols, 04 and 65. 



144 Starved Rock 

who went down to Montreal on such mission were 
frequently tortured at the stake, he resolved to 
turn back ; and being further told by other Indians 
that in order to avoid the consequences of his ac- 
tion he must do something to make himself feared 
by the French, he secretly followed Father Gravier 
from Mackinac to the Peoria village and there 
stirred up a mutiny against him, in which Father 
Gravier was wounded. Two arrows struck him in 
the breast, a third tore his ear, a fourth struck his 
collar bone, while the fifth pierced the arm above 
the wrist and penetrated to below the elbow. This 
was the mortal shot. The arrow was drawn out, 
but the head remained in the- wound. A good Sa- 
maritan Indian and the squaws did what they 
could for him ; and he eventually reached the Mis- 
sissippi at Kaskaskia (Rouensac of the ^^ Rela- 
tion"), where the missionaries tried to cure him 
and afterwards sent him to Mobile for treatment ; 
thence late in 1706 he went to Paris with the same 
object. In 1708 he returned to America, where he 
soon afterwards died, apparently from the effects 
of his wound. He was born at Moulins, on May 
17, 1651; educated at Paris; w^ent to Canada in 
1685 ; and to Illinois in 1688. 

In 1698 came Father P. Gabriel Marest, under 
whose guidance and direction the mission was re- 
moved to the Kaskaskia of our time— the first cap- 



The Mission 145 

ital of the state of Illinois, on the banks of the 
Mississippi.* Father Marest was another noted 
churchman of the West. In 1694 he had accom- 
panied D 'Iberville 's expedition to the Hudson 
Bay, that dislodged the English traders in that 
region; and he there began a mission to the In- 
dians, but in 1695 when the forts were recovered 
by the English, he was captured and sent a pris- 
oner to Plymouth, England, and later sent to 
France. It was, therefore, soon after his release 
that he came to Illinois. Father Marest 's letter, 
published by Kip siipra^ recounting his experi- 
ences in the Illinois, is a most interesting and valu- 
able document, as it gives us many data concerning 
this mission not found elsewhere. 

Father Marest tried to civilize the Illinois as 
well as Christianize them; and taught them how 
to cultivate the soil and to breed the domestic ani- 
mals ; and under his instruction and influence, the 
Illinois became the most peaceful and industrious 
of the western tribes. The town at this time had 
about twenty-two hundred people, said by the 
Father's biographer to have been all Christians 
except about forty or fifty. It was no doubt due 
to him directly that the Illinois country later so 



* The removal of the mission included the removal of the name of 
the town also, Kaskaskia, thus creating the confusion apparent in 
many minds, who have thought the mission was always located at 
Kaskaskia on the Mississippi. 



146 Starved Rock 

rapidly developed its agricultural resources that 
the new settlement became the source of the grain 
and flour consumed by the French settlements 
along the lower Mississippi. 

Of his missionary work Father Marest himself 
says: ^^ Nothing is more difficult than the conver- 
sion of these savages; it is a miracle of the Lord's 
mercy. It is necessary first to transform them in- 
to men; and afterwards to labor to make them 
Christians." The task was so nearly impossible 
that he says: ^'We cannot attribute the conver- 
sions either to the forcible arguments of the mis- 
sionary, or to his eloquence, or to his other talents 
which might be useful in other cormtries but which 
can produce no impression on the minds of our 
Indians; we can render the glory to Him alone 
who even of these stones knows how to make, when 
it pleases Him, children unto Abraham." 

The removal of the mission to Kaskaskia on the 
Mississippi took place in 1700 ; for Father Gravier, 
in his journal of the voyage from Mackinac to 
the mouth of the Mississippi in 1700, having left 
Chicago on September 8, 1700, says he reached the 
Illinois town (the original Kaskaskia) too late to 
prevent the migration which was directed and led 
by Father Marest. He overtook the people, how- 
ever, and marched four days with them down the 
Illinois; and on October 9, 1700, he left Father 



liiii 



The Mission 147 

Marest sick at the village of the Tamaroas, where 
a halt had been made.* 

This migration of missionaries and Indians was 
the natural result of the decay of the Rock's im- 
portance as a commercial point, for reasons ex- 
plained in the previous chapter, and to a desire for 
a consolidation of the western, or Illinois, tribes 
against those new firebrands of the West, the Foxes, 
at some point as remote as practicable from the 
war trails of the latter in their wars with the 
French in the Great Lakes country, to which we 
shall now give some attention. 



* Father Gravier, in a "Relation" addressed to Father de Lamber- 
ville, Feb'y 16, 1701, says of this migration, that starting from Chi- 
cago on Sept. 8, 1700, "I arrived too late among the Illinois of the 
strait (Peorias), of whom Father Marest has charge, to prevent the 
migration of the village of Kaskaskia, u^hich had been too precipitately 
made, in consequence of uncertain news respecting the ^Mississippi 
settlement." He saw only a mistake in the movement, which would 
divide the tribes; "and may God grant that the road [waterway] from 
Chikagoua to the strait [outlet of Peoria lake] be not closed, and that 
the entire Illinois mission may not suffer greatly thereby. I admit to 
you, my Reverend Father, that my heart is heavy at seeing my 
former flock thus divided and scattered." He traveled four days with 
the Kaskaskias ; and then went on to Father Pinet at the Tamaroa 
mission. The Kaskaskias had intended to go to Louisiana, near 
D'Iberville's new settlement : but Father Gravier induced them to stop 
when they reached the Mississippi, at the late modern village of 
Kaskaskia (which has wholly disappeared in the river). This vil- 
lage the Indians called Rouensac. in honor of their Chief Rouensa; 
but the mission perpetuated its ancient name, given it by Marquette. 
When a French trading post was established there, the nucleus of 
the permanent village was made, the traders and voyageurs taking 
Indian wives. (See Thwaites : "Jesuit Relations," Vol. 65.) Father 
Marest died on the Missis^ppi, on Sept. 15, 1714. 




Starved Eock Looking West From Lover's Leap. 



THE DRAMA OF THE EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

God said, I am tired of kings, 
I suffer them no more ; 

* * * * 

My angel. — his name is Freedom, — 
Choose him to be your King; 
He shall cut pathways east and west, 
And fend you with his wing. 

— Emerson. 

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM OF THE FRENCH. 

We come now to the part played by Starved 
Rock in the momentous drama of the eighteenth 
century, when the great struggle took place be- 
tween freedom and absolutism for the possession 
of the fairest and richest part of the North Amer- 
ican continent. When the century opened, the 
French empire in America was at the flood tide of 
its prosperity. The triple alliance of priest, soldier 
and trader had with unerring instinct and judg- 
ment taken possession of every route to the interior 
of the continent, and had so united the native tribes 
in the French interest that Canada and her west- 
ern frontier were deemed so secure that, as we have 
seen, most of the distant garrisons were withdrawn 
as unnecessary to the preservation of colonial au- 
tonomy.* In the far South, though La Salle's 



*Parkman: "A Half Century of Conflict." 

149 



150 Starved Roch 

schemes had come to naught, they had been re- 
vived seven years after his death by Tonty, who 
had successfully '^ urged the seizure of Louisiana 
for three reasons : firstly, as a base of attack upon 
Mexico ; secondly, as a depot for the furs and lead 
ores of the interior ; and, thirdly, as the only means 
of preventing the English from becoming masters 
of the West."* 

More successful than La Salle, D 'Iberville, 
though he built his fort at Biloxi [Mississippi] and 
not on the river, had actually taken possession of 
the mouth of the Mississippi, thus outwitting the 
English, who were in fact on the point of seizing 
the river, and retarding for more than a hundred 
years the development of Louisiana on lines of 
English freedom. New France had, therefore, two 
heads: one looking to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
the other to the Gulf of Mexico ; and if the northern 
wing of the colony had its hardly concealed jeal- 
ousy of the southern, it nevertheless appreciated 
the value of the latter as an aid to stem the incom- 
ing tide of English influence in the north. 

One strategic mistake only had the builders of 



""'Although there were attempts by Gov. Berkeley of Virginia as 
early as 1650 to cross the Alleghenies, and Col. Abraham Wood, a 
Virginian, in 1654-G4 followed streams that found their outlet in the 
Ohio and Mississippi, anticipating Jolliet and Marquette in the valley 
by ten to twenty years, nevertheless up to nearly the end of that cen- 
tury the colonial enterprises in the West were few and far between; 
and Xew France had had ample time to make good her control of the 
interior. 



Drama of the EigJiteenth Century 151 

the Franco-American empire made, but it was vital 
—irremediable: they had neglected the Mohawk 
and Hudson Rivers of New York, which were oc- 
cupied by the Dutch, who were even shrewder trad- 
ers than the French and more far-seeing. Up to 
about this time, too, the English had been content to 
occupy as agriculturists a narrow strip along the 
Atlantic coast, wdiere they busied themselves, and, 
fortunately for future generations in America, 
worried themselves, too, and their governors, w^ith 
questions of political and religious rights and 
privileges, rather than with what the continent con- 
tained behind the Appalachian wall which few of 
them cared to penetrate or to cross. The Hudson 
and the Mohawk Rivers however pierced that wall ; 
and when the Dutch possessions in New York came 
into the hands of the English, the character of the 
Albany colony did not wholly change, but the Eng- 
lishman, coming nearer to it, began to appreciate 
the possibilities of the vast interior for trade from 
Albany; for even then the Englishman was quite 
as accomplished a trader as the Dutchman. 

For twenty-five years the English traders had 
been established on Hudson Bay, diverting the 
northern trade of New France from the St. Law- 
rence. If now the English should also get a foot- 
hold on the Great Lakes and in the famous beaver 
country of the present Michigan peninsula, and 



152 Starved Rock 

cross the mountain wall into the Ohio country and 
reach the Mississippi in that direction, the north- 
ern wing of New France would be hemmed within 
very narrow limits indeed, and her trade ruined 
by the cheaper and better goods of the Yankees.* 

The cession to the English by the Iroquois in 
1701 of all their claims to the country formerly oc- 
cupied by the Hurons precipitated the struggle 
which the shrewd Count Frontenac had long fore- 
seen, but which the politico-clerical influence with 
his successors and the proverbial corruption of the 
court at Quebec had left the colony more or less un- 
prepared to meet. These Iroquois lands were 
bounded by the Lakes Ontario, Huron and Erie, 
and *^ contained in length about 800 miles and in 
breadth 400 miles, including the country where 
beavers and all sorts of wild game keep."t They 
pierced the very heart of New France. 

The problem, then, that confronted the French 
authorities at Quebec was how to stem this un- 
propitious tide. The building of a fort at the foot 
of Huron by Du Lhut in 1686 was a beginning of a 
defense, which was followed by another at Detroit 
in 1701 by La Mothe Cadillac, closing the St. Clair 
River to the English. Another step in the same 
direction brings us back again to Starved Rock 
and the Illinois. 



*Even the coiireurs and voyageurs from Mackinac and the Sault 
carried on a surreptitious trade with the Albany English to obtain 
the latter's low-priced goods. 

t Hinsdale: "The Old Northwest." 



STARVED EOCK IN THE EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

Freedom all winged expands, 

Nor perches in a narrow place ; 

Her broad van seeks implanted lands. 

— Emerson. 

THE INDIAX SIEGES. 

Wherever the French came in contact with them, 
their relations with the Indians were for tlie most 
part singularly felicitous.* This fact may find 
explanation, aside from the natural adaptability of 
the French and a tendency of the woodsmen to 
coalesce with the Indians, in the circumstance that 
they made no effort to dispossess the Indians of 



* There were two exceptions : the Foxes, whose fortunes we are 
about to follow, and the Iroquois — both hated the French. The un- 
relenting enmity of the Iroquois is attributed to the unwise killing 
by Champlain, on July 30, 1609, near Ticonderoga, of two Mohawk 
chiefs, in a foray from Quebec with two other Frenchmen and a 
war party of Hurons and Algonquins. The story has been frequently 
told ; but the effect has recently been epitomized by Harvey in "Cham- 
plain as a Herald of Washington" (Atlantic Monthly, July, 1909) as 
follows : "The fight was notable only because it was the first fight 
on the Atlantic coast of North America in which white men appeared 
as allies of any of the Indians, and the first, on the northern half of 
the coast, in which firearms figured; and because it started the blood 
feud between the Iroquois confederation and the French owners of 
Canada, which lasted until Champlain's countrymen, more than a 
century and a half later, were driven off the continent." And be- 
cause, as we may add, it placed the Five Nations on the side of the 
Dutch and English in the future struggle, and erected a wall between 
France and the more southern colonics. 

153 



154 Starved Eock 

their lands or hunting grounds. It was agreed, 
at least tacitly, that the savages should be left in 
undisturbed possession of the whole of the vast 
domain of the West on condition that they allowed 
the French to control or monopolize its trade. Be- 
sides, the coureurs des hoiSy who made New France 
and built the chain of forts which bound the West 
to Canada, though proud of their French blood and 
language, were in the bush quite as much Indian 
as French, and thus they had immense influence 
over the savages. Above all, the coureurs hated the 
English; and being the shrewdest of diplomats 
they won over the Indians to themselves, and both 
patrolled the forests and lakes as against the ven- 
turesome Englishmen. Even the Iroquois had be- 
come neutral for the time, and the destiny of Amer- 
ica seemed already decided; for "i\\Q lilies of 
France floated without opposition over the entire 
expanse from Quebec to the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi, and from the Alleghenies to the base of the 
Rocky Mountains."* 

But the curse of Canada was the monopoly held 
by the one trading company which had legal con- 
trol of all the commerce of the colony, and whose 
goods were not only poorer but were extortionately 
high as compared with those of the English. The 
Indians were not slow to discover this difference. 



*Hebberd: "Wisconsin under the Dominion of France. 



In the Eighteenth Century 155 

and they began to chafe under the French trading 
yoke. This was especially true of the Foxes of 
Wisconsin, a nation whose renown for bravery, in- 
dependence, intractability and endurance was then 
second to that of no tribe of the West. 

There was, however, another reason for Fox 
hatred of the French than merely commercial dis- 
satisfaction. The first white man they knew was 
Nicolas Perrot, an able and tactful man by whom 
they were favorably impressed ; but after him other 
Frenchmen went among them, who outraged the 
Foxes by their shocking conduct and their offen- 
sive personal bearing. This feeling of hostility 
reached a climax when some Foxes who had made 
the great voyage to Montreal were there maltreated 
by French soldiers. The Foxes were a proud race ; 
and this ignominy so determined them on revenge 
that not a trader or traveller thereafter dared to 
venture into their vicinity. The affair, in fact, was 
quite as disastrous to the French in the West as 
Champlain's ill-timed attack on the Mohawks in 
1609 had been to them in the east. 

This hostility of the Foxes continued for the en- 
tire period of their contact with the French; and 
ultimately it was extended to their Indian allies 
also, as the French came to be more and more in 
touch with the tribes of the West. La Salle did not 
come into contact with the Foxes when forming his 



156 Starved Rock 

confederacy of defense against the Iroquois, nor 
did they annoy him or his allies until after 1700 ; 
but for thirty years or more they kept the tribes in 
Wisconsin and the West generally in continual dis- 
order. During all of Frontenac's second admin- 
istration the Foxes were in secret or open rebellion, 
which he was able neither to punish nor suppress. 
A sort of universal peace was patched up among 
the tribes by his successor. Hector de Callieres, in 
1701, in which the Foxes took part to the extent 
that their spokesman at the treaty-making wound 
up his speech by saying: ^^I now regard the Iro- 
quois as my brother; but I am at war with the 
Sioux" (quasi-friends of the French in the far 
west) . 

There was quiet for the time in the east ; but the 
Upper Country was no safer than before. As early 
as 1699 the Fox- Wisconsin waterway had been 
closed to all travelers. Father St. Cosmethat year 
reports that he found it necessary to go to the Mis- 
sissippi via the Chicago portage because *^the 
Foxes who are on this little [Fox] river that you 
ascend on leaving the Bay to reach the Weskonsin 
will not suffer any person to pass for fear they will 
go to places at war with them, and hence have al- 
ready plundered several Frenchmen w^ho wished 
to go by that road." 

It was no better after the peace. In 1702 a Mon- 



In the Eighteentli Century 157 

treal mercliant going to the Sioux country was 
plundered of goods worth 25,000 to 30,000 francs ; 
Juchereau de St. Denis from Mackinac had to 
bribe them to let his canoes pass ; and a French gar- 
rison of a fort in the Sioux country was dispersed, 
some of the men being killed. It is not surprising 
then that men of Cadillac's and DuLhut's type 
complained of the too hasty evacuation of the forts 
a few years before— a policy of non-interference 
which Cadillac said exposed Frenchmen ^^to hu- 
miliations and insults which they have so often en- 
dured without being able to help it, such as being 
plundered and cruelly beaten, w4iich has disgraced 
the name of France among these tribes." 

This daring misbehavior of the Foxes so exas- 
perated the French that annihilation came to be 
the policy of the government; and it was under- 
stood among the Indian allies of the French that 
the governor. Marquis de Vaudreuil, desired the 
utter extermination of the Fox nation.* The first 
step thereto was the granting of permission to 
Cadillac to found a colony at Detroit, as a substi- 
tute for Du Lhut's fort at St. Joseph on Lake Hu- 
ron, closed by the order of 1699 ; and to this new 
post, by some rare and inexplicable chance, a large 
body of Foxes migrated, the Detroit fort being sur- 
rounded by cantons of Indians as was La Salle's 



* Hebberd : "Wisconsin," etc. 



158 Starved Rock 

Fort St. Louis on the Illinois. But there was at 
Detroit no diplomat with La Salle's finesse or 
Tonty's skill of address and appealing fairness and 
generosity to keep these various tribes from flying 
at each other's throats; and soon there was war 
among the allies, which Cadillac made no real pre- 
tense of checking. The massacre of the Foxes at 
Detroit in 1712 may or may not have been deliber- 
ately planned by the French, but it seems to have 
been so understood by the allies, who, after the 
nineteen days' siege of the Foxes' stockade was 
over, wherein several hundred Foxes were butch- 
ered, set out for Quebec to claim the reward which 
they insisted the governor had promised for the 
Foxes' destruction.* 

The tragedy at Detroit, although it crippled the 
Fox nation, did not destroy it nor break the spirit 
of those indomitable savages, or of their allies, the 
Kiclvapoos and Mascoutins of Rock River ; it only 
intensified their dislike of the French into a deep 
and undying hatred. 

After a short peace, or truce, during which they 
made an alliance with the Sioux, the Foxes in small 
war parties not only made life in the woods near 
Detroit a terror for the French and their allies 
alike, but they began to harass the Peorias and 
Kaskaskias also; so that by 1714 the latter were 



* Parkman : "Half Century of Conflict. 



In the Eighteenth Century 159 

practically driven away from their old homes on 
the Illinois to the protecting arms of the French 
at Kaskaskia and Fort Chartres on the Mississippi, 
only the Peorias remaining at their ancient seat 
on Illinois River. Thus the Foxes, with their settle- 
ment on Fox River of Wisconsin and by their dis- 
persion of the Illinois from their old homes, had 
become virtual masters of both lines of travel be- 
tween the east and the west, and communication 
between Canada and Louisiana became exceeding- 
ly difficult and dangerous. In fact, they had prac- 
tically split the empire of New France asunder, 
and trade was ruined ; for the east was never rich 
in furs, and fur-bearing animals rapidly disap- 
peared when civilization came to the country. At 
the same time, the Iroquois had always placed a 
barrier in the way to the Ohio basin, that prevented 
the French from access to Louisiana by that de- 
sirable route. 

The situation had become desperate therefore; 
and in 1716 De Louvigny was sent with eight hun- 
dred French and Indian allies to crush the Foxes 
at their Wisconsin villages. The latter were badly 
punished and gave hostages to preserve peace, and 
even made a pretense of keeping it; nevertheless 
they prepared for the future. A Fox orator visited 
all the tribes who knew the French, and endeavored 
to rouse them to action against the whites, going 



160 Starved Rock 

as far south as the Chickasaws. Such a confed^ 
eration was not consummated ; but when in 1718 it 
appeared that but one of the Fox hostages re- 
mained alive and that he had been mutilated by 
the loss of an eye by his hosts' abuse, the Foxes 
again became restless and began anew to harass 
the Illinois, *^the devoted henclmien of their 
French masters."* Taking advantage of the visi- 
ble rivalry between Canada and Louisiana and the 
indifference of Canadians to their countrymen's 
troubles in the West,t the Foxes and their allies 
struck the Illinois with impunity, driving them to 
very gates of Fort Chartres. 

Again in 1722 another crisis came. The Illinois 
captured the nephew of Oushala (or Ouachala), 
the principal Fox war chief, and burned him alive. 
A fury of revenge seized the Fox nation. A large 
war party was immediately formed of Foxes with 
their allies, the Mascoutins, Kickapoos, Winne- 
bagoes, Sauks, Sioux, and Abenakis, who advanced 
into the Illinois country and attacked them, driv- 
ing the Illinois to the top of Starved Rock for 
refuge, and held them there at mercy. This Illi- 
nois tribe was the Peorias, whose home was on 
Peoria Lake, the last of the tribes to cling to the 
neighborhood of this famous stronghold of La 



* Parkman : "Half Century of Conflict." 

t The government of Louisiana had been transferred from Canada 
to Paris in 1701. 



In the Eighteenth Century 161 

Salle, all the other tribes having fled to the south- 
west. ^^ Unluckily we know nothing of the details 
of the siege, except the number of the slain : twen- 
ty Peorias and one hundred and twenty of the be- 
siegers," says Hebberd. ^*But the bare figures are 
eloquent ; they tell not of a mere blockade, but of 
fierce assaults, storming parties, desperate at- 
tempts to scale the heights— the old story of Foxes' 
fury and reckless courage." 

The Foxes for some unexplained reason raised 
the siege, thus sparing the Peorias' lives, for which 
subsequently they desired praise of the French. 
Charlevoix* says the Foxes were defeated ; but the 
result of the Fox campaign was the abandonment 
of their country by the Peorias (who retired, for 
a time at least, to their kindred tribes on the Mis- 
sissippi), and ^Hhe domination by the Renards of 
the second great waterway (the Desplaines-Illi- 
nois River) between Canada and Louisiana, "t the 
very heart of New France. J News of this attack 
on the Peorias having reached Fort Chartres, a de- 
tachment of a hundred men, commanded by Cheval- 
ier d'Artaguiette and Sieur de Tisne, was sent to 
their assistance, but before this reinforcement 
reached the Rock, the Foxes raised the siege and 
departed. 



* Charlevoix : "History of New France." 

t Kellogg: "The Fox Indians During the French Regime. 

$ Beckvvith : "The Illinois and Indiana Indians." 



162 Starved Rock 

The affair ^^was a grave disaster for the 
French," Charlevoix says; ^^for now that there is 
nothing to check the raids of the Poxes, communi- 
cation between Canada and Louisiana became less 
practicable." At Versailles this offense of the 
Foxes seemed unpardonable, and the colonial min- 
ister declared that, ^^Tlie Outagamies [Foxes] 
must be effectually put down, and that his Majes- 
ty will reward the officer who will reduce, or, 
rather, destroy them."" 

Nevertheless the destruction of the Foxes pro- 
ceeded but slowly. Their Indian allies were faint- 
hearted and the French officers were scarcely less 
reluctant to attack the Foxes. This unwillingness 
to act provoked from Paris a sharp rebuke of the 
governor, because, the minister said, he had learned 
that the commandants at Detroit and Mackinac 
and other places had prevented raids on the 
Foxes.f The Illinois country suffered severely; 
the settlements were all but ruined ; but as long as 
the Illinois alone suffered, the Canadians took but 
little interest ; as was seen when Lignery went to 
Green Bay and concluded a peace between the 
Foxes and their allies and the Saulteur and Ot- 
tawas, without including the Illinois ; for which he 
was sharply rebuked by the court: ^^It looks as 



*Parkman: "Half Century of Conflict." 

t Kellogg: "The Fox Indians During the French Regime." in Pro- 
ceedings Wis. Hist. Society, 1907. 



In the Eighteenth Century 163 

if he ti-ied to ruin the fur trade from Louisiana.'' 
In 1726 Ligneiy made another paper peace 
which did not include the Illinois ; but quiet did not 
come with his treaty; so that in 1728 he started 
once more to punish the Foxes. He took from 
Quebec some five hundred Frenchmen, to whom 
were added a thousand Indians, intending to de- 
stroy the Foxes at their Wisconsin villages; and 
in August they burned the cabins and destroyed the 
crops, but his nimble enemies escaped him. How- 
ever, the effect upon the Foxes was severe, as the 
affair cost them the loss of valuable allies. 

There were still other attempts to crush the 
Foxes, but without effect, until in 1730, Coulon de 
Villiers, who in 1754 defeated George Washington 
at Fort Necessity, appeared at Quebec with the 
news that his father, commander of La Salle's old 
Fort Miami on St. Joseph River, had struck the 
Foxes a telling, if not crushing, blow, by killing two 
hundred of their warriors and six hundred of the 
WTjmen and children, operating with a force of 
one hundred and seventy Frenchmen who had been 
gathered from various western posts and were as- 
sisted by twelve to thirteen hundred Indian allies, 
under Sieurs de Saint- Ange, father and son, from 
the Illinois settlements, and De Xoyelles, from 
among the Miamis in Indiana. 

^^The accounts of the affair are obscure and not 



164 Starved Eoch 

very trustworthy, ' ' says Parkman. ' ' It seems tliat 
the Foxes began the fray by an attack on the Illi- 
nois at La Salle's old station of La Rocher 
[Starved Rock], on the river Illinois. On hearing 
of this the French commanders mustered their In- 
dian allies, hastened to the spot, and found the 
Foxes intrenched in a grove which they had sur- 
rounded with a stockade." 

Beauharnois writing to the Minister, October 28, 
1730, said: ^^The Renards had taken some Illinois 
prisoners and burned near the Rock the son of the 
great chief. Then the savages assembled. Saint- 
Ange was at the head of the French and three hun- 
dred to four hundred Indians, five hundred men in 
all. The Kickapoos, Mascoutins and Illinois of 
the Rock [Peorias: fifty fighting men, according 
to a census of 1736] had made themselves masters 
of the passes on the northeast side ; and this prob- 
ably compelled the Renards to build a fort at La 
Rocher [the Rock], a league below, to protect them- 
selves against the attacks. One of the scouts from 
the fort on August 12 reported one hundred and 
eleven cabins; and on the 17th the army arrived 
at the Rock." 

Kellogg, on the other hand, says that the Foxes 
had accepted a secret offer of an asylum among 
the Iroquois and were on the march eastward and 
that when Dubisson at Mackinac heard of the mi- 



In the Eighteenth Century 165 

gration, being informed of it by certain Kickapoos 
and Mascoutins who liad abandoned the Fox alli- 
ance, he summoned aid from Fort Chartres, Fort 
St. Joseph and Fort Miami, whose commanders 
brought their Indian allies. 

The Foxes on finding themselves pursued in such 
force built a fort on the prairie ^^ sixty leagues 
south of the end of Lake Michigan"* and between 
the Rock and Ouiantenon (a fort near the site of 
the present city of Lafayette, Indiana), and there 
defended themselves in a siege lasting twenty- 
three days. 

^^The Foxes," says Ferland,t ^4iad chosen an 
admirable position near, or in, a piece of woods 
upon a slope by the side of a small river. Although 
outnumbered four to one, they fought with their 
usual dash and valor, making desperate sorties, but 



* There is great difference of opinion as to the location of this 
battle, and exactness will not be possible. Hocquart, the intendant of 
Canada at the time, informed the court that the Fox fort was "in a 
plain between the River Wabache and the River of the Illinois, about 
sixty leagues [?] to the south of the extremity of Lake Michigan 
and to the east of the Rock in the Illinois country," J. F. Steward 
("Lost Maramech and Earliest Chicago") locates the scene of this 
struggle on Fox River near Piano, 111., where he has marked the sup- 
posed spot with a great boulder; but we must confess his proofs of 
locality are not entirely convincing. (See also Mr. Steward's paper, 
"Conflicting Accounts Found in Early Illinois History," in Transactions 
of 111. Hist. Society for 1908.) Waker B. Douglas, in "The Sieurs de 
Saint-Ange" (Trans. 111. Hist. Society, 1909), says this fight took place 
in what is now La Salle county and that the "small river" was the 
present Covel Creek. This is the most likely supposition proposed, 
in view of the relative nearness to the Rock to Covel Creek at any 
point of its course, only a few miles eastward at the most. 

t Ferland ; "Cours d'Histoire du Canada." 



166 Starved Rock 

were each time driven back by the overwhelming 
numbers of the enemy. The French, on their part, 
dug trenches and proceeded with all the caution 
they had been taught by many campaigns against 
these redoubtable foes. 

'^ After a while the supply of food gave out, and 
famine reigned in both camps. The Foxes and the 
French suffered alike under the calm, cruel im- 
partiality of nature. Two hundred Illinois In- 
dians deserted. But the French persevered, and 
began the construction of a fort to prevent the be- 
sieged from going to the river for water. Further 
resistance now seemed impossible. But on the 
8th of September a violent storm arose, accom- 
panied by heavy thunder and torrents of rain. The 
following night was rainy, dark and cold ; and un- 
der its cover the Foxes stole away from their fort. 
Before they had gone far the crying of their chil- 
dren betrayed them. But the French did not dare 
to attack them amidst a darkness so dense that it 
was impossible to distinguish friend from foe. In 
the morning, however, they set out in hot pursuit." 

The pursuit became a mere massacre (the Foxes 
being then without ammunition), from which only 
fifty or sixty of the Foxes escaped. Many of the 
prisoners were burned at the stake. DeVilliers 
sent his son Coulon as a special messenger to 
Quebec with the news, in earnest of which the latter 



In the Eighteenth Century 167 

took with him a wretched Fox prisoner. The gov- 
ernor in his report to Paris says: '^ Tranquility, 
for so many years disturbed in the Upper Coun- 
try, will now reign ; ' ' and closes with the cheering 
news : ^^ Behold a nation humiliated in such a fash- 
ion that they will nevermore trouble the earth. ' ' 

In truth "the offending tribe must now, one 
would think, have ceased to be dangerous," but 
nothing less than its total destruction would con- 
tent the French. The latter, however, themselves 
never afterwards sent an expedition against the 
Foxes, but turned their punishment over to their 
Indian allies whom their officers led in repeated 
raids upon their unfortunate victims. But even 
this ceaseless vengeance failed to annihilate these 
splendid savages, the remnants of whom found a 
refuge with the Sauks ; and when, a year later, Be 
Villiers, then on Green Bay, went to a Sauk village 
and demanded the delivery to him of certain Foxes 
secreted there, he was fiercely attacked and both 
himself and his younger son killed—the latter by 
the sure aim of a Sauk boy of twelve, who thus 
restored order to a defense by his people that had 
become but a panic. In the fight the French lost 
heavily; but the result of the affair was to send 
the Sauks and Foxes across the Mississippi into 
Iowa, among whose tribes they recuperated their 
strength and became again a ^^ thorn in the flesh" 



168 Starved Rock 

of the French for many years, and a menace later 
even to the American frontier in 1832, when un- 
der Black Hawk, the Sauks and Foxes rose in open 
war against the United States. Then they were 
finally subdued for all time. Their descendants 
still occupy lands in Iowa. 

Though they met the fate of all their race, 
nevertheless the Foxes unconsciously, as has been 
seen, played an important part in shaping the des- 
tiny of the continent ; for it was no slight service 
to liberty as opposed to absolutism that they closed 
the gateways between Canada and Louisiana and 
for thirty years virtually kept them closed, thus, 
preventing the consolidation of the extremes of 
New France; while in endeavoring to destroy the 
Foxes, the French but kindled a mightier confla- 
gration which spread over all the West. *'The 
splendid resistance of the Wisconsin savages and 
the revelation of the white man's weakness and 
wickedness had disenchanted the Indians. The 
prestige of France was gone."* One after another 
the western tribes became refractory and hostile,— 
the Sioux in 1736; and the Chickasaws in the 
South; even the Hurons and Ottawas in 1740 be- 
came uneasy and impudent. Discontent every- 
where among the tribes became the rule, and as 
year after year followed the Canadian governor 



*Hebberd: "Wisconsin Under the Dominion of France." 



In the EigJiteenth Century 169 

could only report to Paris that ^^ there is a great 
change of feeling among the Indians of the West 
and the state of affairs there is very bad." Only 
the Illinois continued faithful to their priests and 
to France. 

This condition of western hostility continued up 
to the very opening of the French and Indian War,. 
whose close saw the retirement of France from 
Canada and the West forever. So that these long 
and awful wars, as discreditable to French human- 
ity as they were to Canadian military acumen, 
paved the way for the Anglo-Saxon conquest and 
occupation when the time was ripe for that happy 
event. Starved Rock as the spot where took place 
not the least important of those struggles between 
the French and their allies and their unconquera- 
ble savage foes, thus became a by no means in- 
significant part of the scenery of that greater con- 
test of races and ideas which ultimately closed by 
giving *Hhe rivers and prairies of the Great West 
to the English-speaking race" and by *^ handing the 
continent over to its rightful inheritors, the free- 
men of America." 




1^ 

m 

o 

w 

H 

H 

O 



THE LAST OF THE ILLINOIS. 



Under the hollow sky. 
Stretched on the prairie lone, 

Center of glory, I, 
Bleeding, disdain to groan. 

But like a battle-cry 
Peal forth my thunder moan. 

Baim — wah — wah ! 



Hark to those spirit notes! 
Ye high heroes divine, 

Hymned from your god-like throats 
That soqg of praise is mine ! 

Mine, whose grave-pennon floats 
O'er the foeman's line. 

Baim — ^wah — ^wah ! 

— Death Song* 

THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 

It is believed that the tragedy which gave 
Starved Rock its suggestive name was a part of 
the aftermath of tlie wars of the conspiracy of 
Pontiac; yet as there are no known cotemporary 
accounts of this occurrence, our knowledge of 
which rests largely on tradition, Beckwithf insists 
there is really no authority at all to support it, 
other than the ^^ vague, though charming, traditions 
drawn from the wonder stories of many tribes." 
Yet no reader of this sketch will, 1 hope, be will- 

* Death Song: "A be tuh ge zhig." Algonquin by Schoolcraft; 
English by C. F. Hoffman. 
fBECKWiTH (Hiram W.) : "Illinois and Indiana Indians." 

171 



172 Starved Rock 

ing, however meager Mr. Beckwitli may have con- 
sidered our authorities, to noAv surrender, at his 
dictum, so dramatic and picturesque a tale, hal- 
lowed as it is by the faith in its truth of our pioneer 
predecessors, who have woven the tale into the 
fabric of local historical tradition. There is noth- 
ing in the least improbable in the legend; rather, 
there is much to support the affirmations of Indian, 
French and American tradition, that the tragedy 
of the obliteration by starvation here of a race of 
dusky warriors did actually take place as residents 
of the Illinois A^alley have been led to believe ever 
since the modern owners of the lands came upon 
them. 

It is not proposed to dwell on the Conspiracy of 
Pontiac. The student of American history and the 
reader of romance alike will find the record in 
Parkman 's volumes bearing that title : a broad his- 
toric projection for the student; history as charm- 
ingly told as romance for the general reader. Suf- 
fice it here to say, that a few days before his death, 
in 1769, Pontiac made his old friend, Pierre Chou- 
teau, the trader, a visit at St. Louis; and while 
there heard of an Indian drinking bout or other 
festivities about to be held at Cahokia. Thither, 
in spite of the warnings of his host, Pontiac went, 
in April, 1769, and while drunk, was, at the in- 
stigation of an English trader named Williamson, 



The Last of the Illinois 173 

murdered for the bribe of a barrel of whiskey, b}' 
a Kaskaskia Indian/" 

The murder set the whole Illinois country aflame. 
^ ' The news spread like lightning through the coun- 
try," says one account, quoted by Parkman. ^^The 
Indians assembled in great numbers, attacked and 
destroyed all the Peorias, except about thirty fam- 
ilies, w^hich were received into Fort Charti'es." 
All the authorities agree that the murder '^brougiit 
on successive wars, and the almost total extermina- 
tion of the Illinois." Parkman 's own text says: 
*^ Could Pontiac's shade have revisited the scene 
of his murder, his savage spirit would have exulted 
in the vengeance which overwhelmed the abettors 
of the crime. Whole tribes were rooted out to ex- 
piate it. Chiefs and sachems, whose veins had 
thrilled with his eloquence ; young warriors, whose 
aspiring hearts had caught the inspiration of his 
greatness, mustered to revenge his fate ; and from 
the north and the east, their united bands de- 
scended on the villages of the Illinois. Tradition 
has but faintly preserved the memory of the event ; 
and its only annalists, men who held the intes- 
tine feuds of the savage tribes in no more account 
than the quarrels of panthers or wildcats, have 



* Parkman : "Conspiracy of Pontiac," Vol. IT. In a note he says 
that Pontiac's body was claimed by St.-Ange, who buried it near his 
fort at St. Louis. A bron;^e tablet in the corridor of the Southern 
Hotel today indicates that that great hostelry has been erected over the 
grave of the famous chieftain. 



174 Starved Bock 

left but a meager record. Yet euougli remains 
to tell us that over the grave of Pontiac more blood 
was poured out in atonement than flowed from the 
veins of the slaughtered heroes on the corpse of 
Patroclus; and the remnant of the Illinois who 
survived the carnage remained forever after sunk 
in utter insignificance." 

The specific incident with which the name of 
Starved Rock is indissolubly linked is nowhere 
mentioned in military reports of the time, for there 
was no contemporary white man's war in whose an- 
nals such an event might be recorded ; nor are the 
Pottawatomie Indians alone to be charged with the 
horrors of the revenge wreaked by Pontiac 's In- 
dian friends. Nevertheless, the Pottawatomie In- 
dians, who had by this time come into possession 
of most of the lands in Illinois formerly held by 
the several tribes who are named in a group as the 
Illinois, were on the ground at this time, and with- 
out doubt took their part in the general fighting. 

The ^^ wonder story" which Mr. Beckwith cites 
as the most interesting of those preserving this tra- 
dition is that published by the late Judge John 
Dean Caton, in a pamphlet entitled, ^^The Last of 
the Illinois and a Sketch of the Pottawatomies. " 
Judge Caton was very early a resident of Illinois 
and of La Salle county and knew well the pioneers 
and the disappearing Indians by personal contact. 



The Last of the Illinois 175 

In his sketch he says that the wars against the 
Illinois had so reduced them in numbers that now, 
in their direst extremity, driven hither as a last 
refuge, ^^they found sufficient space upon the half 
acre of ground which covers the summit of Starved 
Rock. As its sides are perpendicular, ten men 
could repel ten thousand with the means of war- 
fare then at their command. The allies made no 
attempt to take the fort on the Rock by storm, but 
closely besieged it on every side. On the north, or 
river, side the upper rock overhangs the water 
somewhat, and tradition tells us how the confed- 
erates placed themselves in canoes under the shelv- 
ing rock and cut the thongs of the besieged when 
they lowered their vessels to obtain water from the 
river, and so reduced them by thirst; but Mea- 
chelle,* as far as I know, never mentioned this as 
one of the means resorted to by the confederates 
to reduce their enemies, nor, from an examination 
of the ground, do I think this probable ; but they 
depended upon a lack of provisions, which we can 
readily appreciate must soon occur to a savage peo- 
ple who rarely anticipate the future in storing up 
supplies. How long the besieged held out Mea- 
chelle did not, and probably could not, tell us ; but 
at last the time came when the unfortunate rem- 



* Meachelle was a Pottawatomie chief who told the story to Judge 
Caton, the chief being a boy at the time of the siege. 



176 Starved Boch 

nant could hold out no longer. They awaited but 
a favorable ox)portunity to attempt their escape. 
This was at last afforded by a dark and stormy 
night, when, led by their few remaining warriors, 
all stole in profound silence down the steep and 
narrow declivity to be met by a solid wall of their 
enemies surrounding the point where alone a sortie 
could be made, and which had been confidently ex- 
pected. The horrid scene that ensued can be better 
imagined than described. No quarter was asked 
or given. For a time the bowlings of the tempest 
were drowned by the yells of the combatants and 
the shrieks of the victims. 

** Desperation lends strength to even enfeebled 
arms, but no e:fforts of valor could resist the ovei-- 
whelming numbers actuated by the direst hate. 
The braves fell one by one, fighting like very fiends, 
and terribly did they revenge themselves upon 
their enemies. The few women and children whom 
famine had left but enfeebled skeletons fell easy 
victims to the war clubs of the terrible savages, who 
deemed it as much a dut}^ and almost as great a 
glory, to slaughter the emaciated women and the 
helpless children as to strike down the men w^o 
were able to make resistance with arms in their 
hands. They were bent upon the utter extermina- 
tion of their hated enemies, and most successfully 
did they bend their savage energies to the bloody 
task. 



The Last of the Illinois 111 

*^Soon the victims were stretched upon the sloij- 
ing ground south and west of the impregnable 
Eock, their bodies lying stark upon the sand which 
had been thrown up by the prairie winds. The 
wails of the feeble and the strong had ceased to fret 
the night wind, whose mournful sighs through the 
neighboring pines sounded like a requiem. Here 
was enacted the fitting finale to that work of death 
wdiich had been commenced, scarcely a mile away, 
a century before by the still more savage and ter- 
rible Iroquois. 

*^ Still, all were not destroyed. Eleven of the 
most athletic warriors, in the darkness and con- 
fusion of the fight, broke through the besieging 
lines. They had marked well from their high perch 
on the isolated Rock the little nook below where 
their enemies had moored at least a part of their 
canoes, and to these they rushed with headlong 
speed, unnoticed by their foes. Into these they 
threw themselves, and hurried down the rapids be- 
low. They had been trained to the use of the pad- 
dle and the canoe, and knew well every intricacy 
of the channel, so that they could safely thread it, 
even in the dark and boisterous night. They knew 
their deadly enemies would soon be in their wake, 
and that there was no safe refuge for them short 
of St. Louis. They had no provisions to sustain 
their waning strength, and yet it was certain death 



178 Starved Roch 

to stop by the way. Their only hope was in press- 
ing forward by night and by day, without a mo- 
ment's pause, scarcely looking back, yet ever fear- 
ing that their pursuers would make their appear- 
ance around the point they had last left behind. 
It was truly a race for life. If they could reach 
St. Louis, they were safe ; if overtaken, there was 
no hope. We must leave to the imagination the 
details of a race where the stake was so momentous 
to the contestants. As life is sweeter even than re- 
venge, we may safely assume that the pursued were 
impelled to even greater exertions than the pur- 
suers. Those who ran for life won the race. They 
reached St. Louis before their enemies came in 
sight, and told their appalling tale to the comman- 
dant of the fort, from whom they received assur- 
ances of protection, and were generously supplied 
with food, which their famished condition so much 
required. This had barely been done when their 
enemies arrived and fiercely demanded their vic- 
tims, that no drop of blood of their hated enemies 
might longer circulate in human veins. This was 
refused, when they retired with impotent threats 
of future vengeance which they never had the 
means of executing. 

'^ After their enemies had gone, the Illinois, who 
never after even claimed that name, thanked their 
entertainers, and, full of sorrow which no words 



The Last of the Illinois 179 

can express, slowly paddled their way across the 
river, to seek new friends among the tribes who 
then occupied the southern part of this State, and 
who would listen with sympathy to the sad tale they 
had to relate. They alone remained the broken 
remnant and last representatives of their once 
great nation. Their name, even now, must be 
blotted out from among the names of the aboriginal 
tribes. Henceforth they must cease to be of the 
present, and could only be remembered as a part 
of the past. This is the last we know of the 4ast 
of the Illinois. ' They were once a great and pros- 
perous people, as advanced and as humane as any 
of the aborigines around them; we do not know 
that a drop of their blood now animates a human 
being, but their name is perpetuated in this great 
State, of whose record of the past all of us feel 
so proud, and of whose future the hopes of us all 
are so sanguine. 

^^Till the morning light revealed that the canoes 
were gone the confederates believed that their san- 
guinary work had been so thoroughly done that 
not a living soul remained. So soon as the escape 
was discovered, the pursuit was commenced, but as 
we have seen, without success. The pursuers re- 
turned disappointed and dejected that their ene- 
mies' scalps were not hanging from their belts. 
But surely blood enough had been spilled— 



180 Starved Rock 

vengeance should have been more than satisfied. 

^^I have failed, no doubt, to properly render 
Meaehelle's account of this sad drama, for I have 
been obliged to use my own language, without the 
inspiration awakened in him by the memory of the 
scene which served as his first baptism in blood. 
Who can wonder that it made a lasting impression 
on his youthful mind'? Still, he was not fond of 
relating it, nor would he speak of it except to those 
who had acquired his confidence and intimacy. It 
is probably the only account to be had related by an 
eye-witness, and we may presume that it is the most 
authentic." 

While the writer must confess that the learned 
jurist's version of the Starved Rock tradition is 
open to the criticism that some of its details are 
improbable, nevertheless of the substantial truth 
of the legend, we believe there can be but little 
doubt. Even man's wonder stories have always 
something of fact, of human experience, or of phy- 
sical phenomena, behind them, as one might reply 
to Mr. Beckwith's skepticism. But the story of 
Starved Rock, as told by Judge Caton, has been 
corroborated by other competent searchers for the 
truth, especially by the late Hon. Perry A. Arm- 
strong, of Morris, another of the pioneers of La 
Salle county, Illinois, who knew personally many 
of the famous Indians of this part of the State, who 



The Last of the Illinois 181 

died subsequently to the coming of the permanent 
American settlers. Among these was an old chief 
named Shick Shack, claiming to be 104 years of 
age, who, as Mr. Armstrong said, in an address" 
at a celebration at Starved Rock of the two-hun- 
dredth anniversary (September 10, 1873) of its 
discovery, told him substantially the same story 
that Meachelle told Judge Caton, which the latter 
published in 1876. Shick Shack said he was pres- 
ent at the siege, a boy half grown. 

The late IST. Matson,t of Princeton, was another 
student of this legend. In prosecuting his re- 
searches, he spent much time (prior to 1882) with 
the descendants of French colonists who had lived 
at Kaskaskia and Cahokia in the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Mr. Matson was more than convinced of the 
truth of the legend, so called. Indeed, he goes so 
far as to identify ^^the only survivor of the fear- 
ful tragedy." This warrior, Mr. Matson tells us, 
was a young man, ^^ partly white, being a descen- 
dant on his father's side from the French. Being 
alone in the world after the catastrophe, he went 
to Peoria, joined the colony, and there ended his 
days. He embraced Christianity, and became an 
officer in the church, assuming the name of An- 
tonio La Bell ; and his descendants are now (1882) 



* Ottawa Free Trader, September, 1873. 
t Matson : "Pioneers of Illinois," 1882. 



182 Starved Rock 

living near Prairie du Rocher, one of whom, 
Charles La Bell, was a party to a suit in the United 
States court to recover the land on which the city 
of Peoria now stands." 

Mr. Matson further states that Col. Jos. N. 
Bourassa, a descendant of the Illinois French, liv- 
ing (1882) in Kansas, had collected a large num- 
ber of stories relating to the Starved Rock tragedy ; 
and himself had heard two aged warriors, who 
participated in the massacre, narrate many inci- 
dents which took place at that time. Another old 
Indian named Mashaw, once well known by early 
Ottawa and Hennepin traders, Mr. Matson says, 
also made various statements, through an inter-* 
preter, in relation to the tragedy, to early Ameri- 
can traders and settlers. Mashaw said that seven 
Indians escaped from the Rock. Medore Jennette, 
an employe of the Chouteaus, the famous fur 
traders at St. Louis, who lived many years at the 
Pottawatomie village at the mouth of Fox River 
[Ottawa], has left many traditions of this tragedy 
to his descendants, according to Mr. Matson. 
Jennette came to the country in 1772 and says he 
himself saw the bones of the dead Illinois upon 
the Rock. An Indian named Shaddy (or Shaty; 
was still another who gave Mr. Matson details of 
this story, which he had from his father, who was 
present. Shaddy (Shaty) said only one man, the 



Tlie Last of Ihe Illinois 183 

half-breed La Bell, escaped. Two traders, Robert 
Maillet and Felix La Pance, are said to have left 
the record that, returning from Canada with goods, 
they saw the buzzards on Starved Rock cleaning 
the bones of the dead. Further, Mr. Matson adds 
that Father Buche, a priest at Peoria, traveling 
up Illinois River the following spring (1770), 
ascended the Rock and there saw the horrid evi- 
dences of the tragedy, the holy Father's written 
story of this visit being in manuscript (dated 
April, 1770) which, in 1882, was in the hands of 
one Hypolite Pilette, then living on the American 
Bottom. 

Xot to go further, it may be said in conclusion 
that there is nothing improbable in the Starved 
Rock legend. In this narrative we have seen 
the Rock at least once used as a refuge and its oc- 
cupants subjected to siege, although it did not come 
to so dire a consummation as the siege we are con- 
sidering; but the murderous character of this de- 
nouement is entirely consistent with Indian hab- 
it and practice. Speaking of the remorseless mas- 
sacre of several hundred Foxes (Outagamies) at 
Detroit, 1712, by French and Indians, Parkman* 
says: ^^ There is a disposition to assume that 
events like that just recounted were a consequence 
of the contact of white men with red, but the primi- 



*Parkman: "Half Century of Conflict." 



184 Starved Bock 

tive Indian was quite able to enact such tragedies 
without the aid of Europeans. Before French or 
English influence had been felt in the interior of 
the continent, a great part of North America was 
the frequent witness of scenes more lurid in color- 
ing and on a larger scale of horror. In the first 
half of the seventeenth century the whole country, 
from Lake Superior to the Tennessee and from the 
Alleghenies to the Mississippi, was ravaged by 
wars of extermination, in which tribes, large and 
powerful, by Indian standards, perished, dwindled 
into feeble remnants or were absorbed by other 
tribes and vanished from sight." Extermination 
of the red man by red men's and white men's hands 
alike was the fate of the Indian ; and the Starved 
Rock tragedy was but an incident of the resistless 
and remorseless movement of Indian destiny. 



i 



THE AFTERMATH. 

Far as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell, 
Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well. 

— Puritan Ballad. 

THE POTTAWATOMIES. 

The Hon. P. A. Armstrong, of Morris, 111., who 
wrote much upon the Indian wars of Illinois 
in the last century, in 1873 published in the Mor- 
ris Beformei^ a series of articles on the Starved 
Rock tradition, based upon personal interviews 
had many years ago with early pioneers of La Salle 
and Grundy counties, as well as the retiring red 
men, trappers, traders and other frontiersmen. 
After sketching the war which ended with the Rock 
tragedy, Mr. Armstrong brings the conquering 
tribes together the following spring on Indian 
Creek, in La Salle county, north and east of Ot- 
tawa, where they met to have a jollification over 
their victory, and then proceeds substantially as 
follows : 

^^On this occasion weeks were spent in feasting, 
dancing and merrymaking,— weeks fraught with 
the most direful consequences to the peace and har- 
mony of the allies ; for at this feast each and every 
warrior was allowed and expected to recite in the 

185 




A Eavine Near Starved Eock, Called French Canyon. 



The Aftermath 187 

most exaggerated manner his prowess as a war- 
rior ; the scalps he had taken, the dangers encount- 
ered and sufferings endured, commencing in all in- 
stances with ^Big Indian me.' Jealousies at once 
sprung up as each candidate applied for applause, 
the squaws and pappooses naturally siding with 
the warriors of their respective tribes ; and a feel- 
ing of distrust, if not hate, was soon engendered, 
which daily increased, so that when the chiefs came 
to talk about the division of the territory they had 
acquired, each tribe claimed the lion's share. They 
all desired that territory watered by the Illinois 
River and its tributaries. An amicable division 
or adjustment could not be made. The Miamis 
were by far more numerous than either of the other 
tribes, and moreover were much better armed, 
since they had quite a number of muskets while 
the other tribes had none. This rendered the 
Miamis very domineering and haughty. They de- 
manded all or nearly all of the newly acquired ter- 
ritory, which, of course, the other two tribes re- 
sisted ; hence an open rupture was made, and a bat- 
tle ensued upon the very grounds they had used in 
feasting, the Pottawatomies and Kickapoos uniting 
their forces against the Miamis. Many were slain 
on both sides ; and after fighting from morning un- 
til night, the Miamis took advantage of the night to 
withdraw, leaving the allies in possession of the 



188 Starved Rock 

battle field. But this battle, although a severe one, 
was by no means a decisive one. The losses on both 
sides were heavy, and neither were in a condition 
to renew the fight for several months, as they were 
out of provisions and short of clothing and imple- 
ments of war. 

**The rest of the summer and following winter 
was spent in preparing for a renewal of the contest 
the following spring. The Miamis went down the 
river and thence to Kaskaskia, while the Pottawat- 
omies and Kickapoos remained near their previous 
winter quarters, collecting provisions and clothing 
and constructing bows and arrows and other im- 
plements of Indian warfare. Early in the spring 
following (1771), the Miamis returned northward 
to give battle to their late allies, but now bitter 
enemies, and were met near Peoria, where another 
battle was fought, which, like the former one, was 
not decisive— was, indeed, a drawn battle ; and each 
party buried their own dead. 

^^The war lasted, with indifferent success to 
either party, for about five years, and many a hard 
fought battle attested the bravery of these unfor- 
tunate, passion-blinded savages, who left their dead 
buried in many places throughout the coveted ter- 
ritory. In the year 1775 they had worked around 
and nearly back to the place where their first battle 
had occurred with the Illinois. Harassed and worn 



The Aftermath 189 

by repeated and sanguinary battles, both sides were 
well nigh exhausted. 

^^A proposition was then made on the part of the 
Miamis to pick three hundred warriors from each 
side and let them commence to fight at sunrise and 
continue the fight until either the one side or the 
other should conquer. This proposition was at 
once accepted by the Pottawatomies and Kicka- 
poos, upon the condition that the weapons on both 
sides should be the bow and arrow, tomahawk, 
knife and spear, or such implements of warfare 
as were peculiarly Indian, and that the remnant 
of each army sliould cross to the east side of the 
Wabash River, so that no assistance or interfer- 
ence could possibly be made by either side. This 
agreement was entered into with all the solemnity 
of the high councils of these respective tribes, and 
three hundred picked warriors were selected from 
each side, who crossed over to the bloody ground 
and encamped upon Sugar Creek, which empties 
into the Wabash River. The place selected for this 
terrible duel was a heavy timber about twenty miles 
from the Wabash. The battle was to commence at 
sunrise the following morning. 

^^The fated morning came— a calm, cool, bright 
September morn, and with the coming of the morn- 
ing sun the battle commenced. Six hundred stal- 
wart warriors engaging in a strife for victory or 



190 Starved Rock 

death. Here were the deeds of a Thermopylse re- 
enacted. Quarter was neither asked nor given— 
'death was the watchword and reply. ' Now shield- 
ing behind some giant oak— every ruse was re- 
sorted to in the hope of inducing the enemy to ex- 
pose his person— now grappling in a death strug- 
gle, the combatants fell never to rise again. 

''This duel raged from sunrise to sunset, when 
twelve warriors only remained— five Miamis and 
seven Pottawatomies and Kickapoos. The five 
run, the seven are the victors. The great chiefs, 
Shick Shack, Sugar, Marquett and Shaty were 
among the seven. The Miamis were conquered; 
and by their agreement gave up all claim to the 
hunting ground of the annihilated Illinois and re- 
tired east of the Wabash. 

"Thus did the Pottawatomies and Kickapoos be- 
come the successors of the Illinois, and soon after 
this final battle with the Miamis they divided the 
territory between themselves, the Kickapoos tak- 
ing all the territory adjoining the Wabash west to 
a line running north and south through Oliver's 
Grove in Livingston county, and the Pottawat- 
omies all the territory west of that line." 

The Pottawatomies, having taken undisputed 
possession of their conquest, made their principal 
village on the plain northwest of Starved Rock, 
near the present village of Utica, where, among 



The Aftermath 191 

others, the youthful G. S. Hubbard, later one of 
the founders of the city of Chicago, as representa- 
tive of the American Fur Company, carried on a 
trade with them. Here, unlike the vanished Illi- 
nois, the Pottawatomies lived in tents, not in cab- 
ins. Another important village was called Wau- 
bunsee (or Wauponehsee) , located at the mouth 
of the Fox River of Illinois, where is now the city 
of Ottawa. 

In 1814, a treaty was made with the Ottawas, 
Chippewas and Pottawatomies, kindred tribes, by 
Ninian Edwards, A¥illiam Clark and Auguste 
Chouteau, by which the Indians gave up their Ill- 
inois lands south of a line running west from Lake 
Michigan to the Mississippi. A few years later 
(1834) the Pottawatomies were removed from Ill- 
inois to new lands beyond the Mississippi ; and the 
Indian's part in the history of Starved Rock came 
to an end forever. 



MODERN STARVED ROCK. 

Methinks you take luxurious pleasure 
In your novel western leisure. 

— Thoreau. 

THE ERA OF THE WHITE MAN. 

^^Tlien the white man came, pale as the dawn, 
with a load of thought, with slumbering intelli- 
gence as a fire raked up. He bought the Indian's 
moccasins and furs; then he bought his hunting 
grounds ; and at length he forgot where the Indian 
was buried and plowed up his bones." It is the 
same here as everywhere; each locality plays its 
variation of the theme which but now is dying 
away in the west, as the wild Indian slowly dis- 
appears off the face of the earth ; and from a feudal 
castle of Sieur de la Salle and a Rock of refuge 
for hunted savages. Starved Rock has passed into 
its ' ' western leisure. ' ' 

Always a landmark of the great West in the 
most romantic epochs of its history, it still was such 
when the English settlers began to invade the Ill- 
inois country; and it would be difficult to find a 
traveler journeying through the Illinois Valley, 
^^ spying out the land," who did not turn aside to 
visit and in his letters call attention to this re- 
markable natural curiosity. 

193 



194 Starved Rock 

Flint in his *^ History and Geography of the 
Mississippi Valley/' published in 1833, devotes a 
page to ^'Roek Fort," describing the beauty of the 
Rock itself and its surroundings and repeating the 
tradition that has given it its name, though he no- 
where calls it other than ^^Rock Fort." The Rock, 
he says, ^4ias on its top a level surface of three- 
fourths of an acre in extent, and is covered by soil 
several feet in depth, which has thrown up a groT\1:h 
of young trees. These form, as they receive their 
peculiar tints from the seasons, a verdant or gor- 
geous and particolored crown for this battlement 
of nature's creation." He describes the natural 
beauty and defenses of the Rock and adds that the 
Illinois could have escaped destruction if they 
could have gotten water ; so that he appears to have 
believed the truth of the story of the disastrous 
siege, even if he nowhere gives the Rock its modern 
name. 

Charles Fenno Hoffman, a then more or less dis- 
tinguished New York litterateur, who visited the 
Rock in January, 1834, while on a winter tour 
through the West, on the other hand, calls the 
place '^Starved Rock" and nothing else, showing 
that such was its common name at that time in the 
Illinois country. Hoffman has a note, written by 
an unidentified friend resident in Illinois, which 
repeats the familiar legend, with this single ex- 



Modern Starved Rock 195 

ceptioD, that while the writer says one person es- 
caped from the Rock, that person was a squaw, who 
was still alive when the Englishmen entered the 
country. 

Schoolcraft (1820), in his ^^ Travels through the 
Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley," re- 
cords having visited the Rock, when he made the 
sketch from which the engraving used at the end of 
this chapter has been made. ^^ Strong and almost 
inaccessible by nature," he says, ^^this natural 
battlement has been still further fortified by the 
Indians; and many years ago was the scene of a 
desperate conflict between the Pottawatomies and 
one branch of the Illinois Indians." He then pro- 
ceeds to tell how the Illinois fled to the Rock ; how 
they got water by letting down vessels attached to 
ropes; how their enemies prevented their getting 
water by cutting away the vessels. ^^The conse- 
quence was a surrender which was followed by a 
total extinction of the tribe." He erroneously 
credits the story to Charlevoix (1682-1761). The 
Illinois River seen from the Rock he calls ^^a view 
of this modern Oxus. " 

Schoolcraft found the site of a Pottawatomie 
[Miami "?] village on Buffalo Rock and another 
village site on the plain below that plateau, pro- 
tected by a ditch and wall. Here, ^^our trusty 
[Indian] guide ^Peerish' informed us, was the 



196 Starved Rock 

last stand of the Kaskaskias before they re- 
treated to the Rock Fort." 

Of all the many articles that were written of 
Starved Rock in the first half of the nineteenth 
century,* however, none, perhaps, came to have a 
wider circulation, or gave the Rock wider celebrity, 
than one written by Charles Lanman, which was 
republished as an ^^ elegant extract in prose from 
an eloquent writer" in the famous '' Sanders 
Series" of readers ^^for the use of academies and 
the higher classes in common and select schools." 
It was read and declaimed by Illinois youth of sev- 
eral decades ; and I have no doubt that the article 
so published has been the means of bringing thou- 
sands of curious visitors to the Rock in the past 
fifty years. 

The era of the ^^ plowshare and pruning hook" 
has come to Starved Rock; but the frightful and 
laborious past, soothed and softened by the tem- 
pering touch of lapsing time, has left its record 
which now is like the 

Legends and runes 
Of credulous days; old fancies that have lain 
Silent from boyhood, taking voice again, 
Warmed into life once more, even as tunes 
That, frozen in the fabled hunting horn. 
Thawed into sound. 

The modern Starved Rock beleaguerers come ar- 
rayed in outing suits and picnic habiliments ; and 



Modern Starved Boch 197 

where once the Frenchman braved the terrors of 
savagery, his nineteenth century successors, born 
of all nations, now invade the land to make al 
fresco holiday. 

Near by, and accessible to pleasure seekers, are 
the glens and ravines, locally called canyons, of Ill- 
inois River, which unite to make this the most in- 
teresting locality from a scenic point of view on the 
entire stream. Farther away, but still within even 
walking distance— a few miles— is the famous 
Deer Park Glen, the beauty spot of the Big Ver- 
milion River which itself is for many miles of its 
length the most interesting region, from the geolo- 
gist's and artist's point of view, in all northern 
Illinois. 

In short. Starved Rock has become a very pop- 
ular summer resort of the Illinois Valley, visited 
by thousands of people annually from all parts of 
the Union. And now that the state of Illinois has 
purchased the Rock and contiguous acres and 
made of them a state park and forest reserve, 
the great historic site will be preserved from the 
destructive attrition of pure commercialism that 
was ruining its physical beauty, and the Rock will 
forever stand as a monument to the indomitable 
La Salle and his noble, generous and unselfish 
friend Tonty, to the martyred Ribourde and those 



198 



Starved Eock 



other ^^ apostles to the gentiles," as well as to those 
weak ones of earth, whose mortal sufferings here 
were, in God's mysterious wisdom, not the least of 
the many contributions of human sacrifice and suf- 
fering which have preserved to the people of the 
Illinois Valley, and of the United States, and of the 
world, the priceless heritage of English Liberty. 




Starved IiOCk. 



(Reproduced, greatly reduced in size, from Schooi- 

craft's "Travels," etc. It is the first picture ever 

made of the Rock, so far as is known.) 



RELICS. 

Some rusted swords appear in dust; 
One, bending forward, says, 
"The arms belonged to heroes gone ; 
We never hear their praise in song." 

— Duati of Ca-Lodin. 

AN ANCIENT DEED. 

[Translation,] 
^^The year 1693, the 19tli of April, I, Francis de 
la Forest, Captain on the retired list in the marine 
service, Seignor of part of all the country of 
Louisiana, otherwise Illinois, granted to Monsieur 
de Tonty and to me by the King to enjoy in per- 
petuity, we, our heirs, successors, and assigns, the 
same as it was recognized by the act of the Sov- 
ereign Council in Quebec in the month of August, 
of the year 1691, the said council assembled, de- 
clare in the presence of the undersigned witness 
that I have ceded, sold, and transferred to M. 
Michel Acau* the half of my part of the above de- 
scribed concession, to enjoy the same like myself 
from the present time, to him, his heirs, succes- 
sors, and assigns, with the same rights, privileges, 
prerogatives and benefits which have been here- 
tofore accorded to the late M. de la Salle as it ap- 



* See Chapter on "The Missions," supra. 

199 






»djtbUt1i^if»LA» ^ 






^ft^JM.CC. «;>5//>!«.^,^ -^%/^^^ atC4lr-/cU%rau^ 



^y^imc 



Facsimile of the First Deed Executed in 
Illinois. 



Relics 201 

pears particularly in the decree of the Council of 
the King ; and in consideration of the sum of 6,000 
livres in current beaver which the said M. Acau 
shall pay me at Chicagou, where I stay, and upon 
the making of the payment down I cannot demand 
from him any advantage neither for the carriage 
of the said beaver to Montreal nor for the risk, 
and as there is no notary here for him to pass 
an instrument of sale I bind myself at the first 
occasion to send him one, as also a copy compared 
before a notary of the above mentioned decree of 
the Council of the King touching the present con- 
cession, on faith of w^hich we have both signed the 
said contract of sale the one and the other the day 
and the year as above ; and in case that one of us 
two would dispose of his part the remaining one 
shall be the first preferred, and this is mutual be- 
tween M. de Tonty and me. Made in duplicate the 
day and year aforesaid. 

^^Dela Forest. 

^^M. Acq. 

^*De la Descouvertes^ Witness. 

'^Nicholas Laurens^, de la Chapelle^ Witness." 

The deed is indorsed on the back to the following 
effect : ^^Bill of sale between Mr. Aco and me con- 
veying the land of the Illinois." 

This deed was purchased in Paris, late in year 
1893, by Hon. Edward G. Mason and deposited by 



202 Starved Rock 

him in the archives of the Historical Society of 
Chicago, January 16, 189i. It is believed to be the 
first conveyance of Illinois real estate,— though its 
metes and bounds are not very clear, except that it 
was the Illinois country,— made by deed executed 
within the borders of the State; but the deed was 
also a conveyance of a trading concession as of 
lands. The document covers one page of large 
foolscap paper and is apparently all in the hand- 
writing of La Forest/^ The paper bears an ancient 
watermark and is of the same texture and quality 
as that used in Canada at that period. 

In presenting the document to the Society, Mr. 
Mason epitomized the facts given in this little book, 
concluding as follows : 

*^The grantee in the deed, whose name is usually 
written Michel Accau, was the real leader of the 
party which, by La Salle 's direction, explored the 
upper Mississippi and discovered the Falls of St. 
Anthony in 1682. Father Hennepin accompanied 
this expedition as a volunteer, and [having written 
an account of his travels on that occasion] is usu- 
ally given the credit of its discoveries. Accau sub- 
sequently resided in Kaskaskia [town near Starved 
Rock] and married a daughter of the chief of the 



* After La Forest's trading concession was revoked in 1702, he be- 
came Cadillac's lieutenant at Detroit and in 1710 was appointed com- 
mander of that post, which position he held until 1714, He died at 
Boucherville in 1719. — Thwaites: "La Hontan's Voyages." 



Eelics 203 

Kaskaskia tribe. A record of their marriage still 
exists in the ancient register of the [new] parish 
of the Immaculate Conception at Kaskaskia [on 
the Mississippi]. 

^^Of the witnesses, De La Descouverte was a Ca- 
nadian voyageur from Lachine, who accompanied 
La Salle to the mouth of the Mississippi in 1682 ; 
La Chapelle was also one of La Salle's men, w^ho 
was with him in the year 1680, and was sent b^^ him 
from the St. Joseph River and the Michillimack- 
inac in search of La Salle's lost vessel, the Griffin, 
and afterwards joined Tonty at Fort Crevecoeur, 
near the present site of Peoria. 

*'It, is quite certain that this document was ex- 
ecuted either at Fort St. Louis of the Illinois or 
at Chicago, with the probability in favor in the 
latter place [as La Forest was stationed there 
while he and Tonty divided the concession]. In 
1693 there had been already, certainly for eight 
[or ten"?] years, a fort here, and there was near 
it at that time a Jesuit mission ; and doubtless here 
occurred the first conve3^ance of real estate in what 
is now Illinois executed within its boundaries, 
which this ancient document evidences. It is fit- 
ting and fortunate that it should, two hundred 
years after its execution, come into possession of 
the Historical Society of Chicago to be preserved 
sacredly by it." 



204 



Starved Rock 



Another interesting relic of Starved Rock's an- 
cient cla^^s is a cross, of which below is a picture 
made from a photograph (full size of original). 




A Rare Cross. 



It was found near the Rock, and was the property 
of the late Col. D. F. Hitt. To whom it belonged 
is of course unknown. It is made of brass and may 



Relics 205 

have belonged to any of the soldiers or voyageurs 
or even Indians who made the Rock their home or 
stopping place. The cross looks much like one of 
the rare ^^ Lorraine crosses," still found at inter- 
vals in Wisconsin. A similar cross, found some 
years ago by a Temagaming Indian, returning 
from his winter's trapping, under a growth of 
moss, as he was clearing the ground for his tent, 
was declared by the highest antiquarian authority 
in Canada— Father Jones, of the Jesuit College in 
Montreal— to be one of a lot of sacred trinkets sent 
out by a certain Countess of Lorraine, to be dis- 
tributed to the Huron and other Indians, as a re- 
ward for espousing the cause of the French as 
against the English. He fixed the date of its pre- 
sentation as certainly earlier than 1649, because in 
the spring of that year the Huron tribe was prac 
tically exterminated by the more warlike and 
crafty Iroquois. The Jesuits then withdrew their 
mission, and no more of these Lorraine crosses 
were distributed in Canada, though they are fre- 
quently found in Wisconsin and other regions that 
later came into the field of the Jesuit missions. In 
the possession of the Chicago Historical Society 
is a similar but larger cross of silver, found near 
the site of La Salle's fort on Peoria Lake. Being 
of silver it was doubtless a gift to a chief. 



206 Starved Rock 

THE EOCK IX LITERATURE. 

The Eock has been the subject of numerous 
legendary tales and poems other than those men- 
tioned in the text, a few of which may be mentioned 
here, towit : 

'* Legend of Starved Rock," by Mary W. Jan- 
vein; first published in ^'Peterson's Magazine,'' 
December, 1856. 

''0-na-we-quah ; or, A Legend of Starved Rock," 
by Wm. Rounseville; first puljlished in the ^'AVest- 
ern Magazine," 185-. 

"L'lah: An Indian Legend Verified," a narra- 
tive poem; in '^L'lah and Other Poems," by Aman- 
da T. Jones, Buffalo : H. H. Otis & Breed, Butler 
& Co., 1861. 

These stories are purely fanciful and bear no 
resemblance to any '^ legend" of the Rock in com- 
mon currency. 

The most noteworthy story having Starved Rock 
for its scene is ''The Story of Tonty," by the late 
Mrs. Catherwood, a very charming historical novel- 
ette. Other recent novels utilize Starved Rock to 
a lesser degree, but it is hardly worth while to 
catalogue them here. 



GLOSSARY 

Webster's International vowel equivalents; n is the nasal n; r the 
rolled r; s as s in pleasure. 

Allouez (a'-loo'-a') 

Aramoni (a'-ra-mii'-ne') 

ArtaguieUe (ar'-ta-gef) 

Auguel, Antoiiy (d-geV) 

Baptiste de la Salle (ba-tesf dti la-sai) 

Barrios (ba-re-os') 

Beaubien (bo'-be-an') 

Beaujeu (bo-su') 

Bellefontaine (bel'-foN'-tgn') 

Binneteau (ben'-to') 

Boisrondet (bwa'-roN'-da') ^ 

Brossard, Antoine (brii'-sar', aN'-twan ) 

Cadillac, la Mothe (ka'-deMak', la m6t) 

Cartier, Jacques (kar'-te'-a, sak) 

Castin (kas'-taN') 

SS! k'^ifX? &di laSalle (kav'-lS'-a' ra'na' rtt'-bgr' s.'-ar' 

dG la sal) 

Chanjon (shaN'-soN') 

Charleville (sharl'-vel') 

Charlevoix (sharl'-vwa' or shar'-le-vwa ) 

Charron (sha'-roN') 

Chartres, Fort (shar'-tr) 

Chaulne, Andre de (shon aN-drad ) 

Chenet (shu'-na') 

Chequemago?i (she' -que' -m& -goN) / u--' « ' r^s' ri«r' hp' fir' Ha 

Chouart, Medard, Sieur des Groseillers (shoo'-ar me -dar , se -lir da 

gro-za-ya') 
Chouteau (choo'-to') 
Conges (koN-sa') 
Conti (koN-te') 

Coureurs de bois (k5or-ur' dQ bwa) 
Couteur (koo-tur') 
Crevecoeur (krgv'-kQr') _ 

Cuillerier, Rene (kwe'-y6-re-a , ra -na ) ^ 
D'Ahancour, Marie (da'-baN'-koor , ma -re ) 
Dablon (da'-bloN') 
Daloes (da'-lo'-6z') 
D'Antigny (daN'-ten'-ye ) 
D'Autraij (do-tra') 

207 



208 Starved Rock 

De Baugis, Chevalier (dQ bo'-se', shii'-va'-le'-a') 

Denonville (du'-non'-vel') 

Descouvertes (da'-koo'-vert') 

D'Iberville (de'-ber'-vel') 

DeLaunay (du' l6'-na') 

De Noyelles (du nwa'-y6l') 

Deslettes (da'-le'-6t') 

Dizy (de'-ze') 

Dongan (doN'-gaN) 

Dorvilliers (dor'-ve'-le'-a') 

Douay, Anastase (doo'-a, a'-nSs'-taz') 

Druillets (droo'-e'-a') 

Du Lhut (doo-loot) 

Durantaye (do6'-raN'-ta') 

Esnault, Michael de Gres Philipes (es'-no', me-shgl' dQ Graz fe-lep') 

Faye, Jacques de (fa, sak dQ) 

Ferland (f6r'-laN') 

Fort Duquesne (Fort du-kan' or Fort doo'-ken') 

Franquelin (fraN'-ku'-laN' or fr6Nk-laN') 

German (ser'-moN') 

Gravier (grS,'-ve'-a') 

Guyon, Michael (goo'-yoN' me-shgl') 

Hazeur (a'-zur') 

Irondequoit (i-ron'-de-kwS,) 

Jolliet, Louis (so'-le'-a', loo'-e') 

Joutel (soo'-tsr) 

Kishwaukee (kish-wah'-kee) 

LaBarre, Le Febvre de (IS, bar, lu fgbr dti) 

La Bell (la bel) 

La Chesnaye (IS, sh6'-na') 

La Chine (IS, shen) 

Le Clerc (lii kl6r) 

La Fontaine (la foN'-tSn') 

La Forest (la fo'-re') 

La Gardeur, Rene (13, gSrd-tir', re'-neO 

Langres (laN'-gr') 

La Pance (la paNs) 

Laon (laN) 

Laporte (IS-port') 

La Vantum (la vaN'-tiim) 

Le Moyne, Pierre (IQ mwan, pe'-6rO 

LeRocher (lii rti'-sha') 

Le Neuf (Id nuf) 

UEsperance (l6s-pa-raNs') 

Le Vasseur (IQ vS'-siir') 

Le Violette (lii ve'-o'-l6t') 

Lignery (len'-re') 

Louis le Jeune (loo-e 13, sQn) 



Glossary 209 

Louvigny (loo'-v6n'-y6') , . , j. •• n 

Lusson, Sieur de Saint (1o6-son', se'-ur du saN) 

Maillet (mi'-ya') 

Maramech (ma'-ra'-m6k') 

Marlin, Mathew (mar-laN') 

Marest (ma'-ra') 

Marquette, Jacques (mar-k6t , sak) 

Marquette, Vermand (mar-ket, v6r-maN ) 

Mascoulins (mas'-koo'-taNs') 

Meachelle (ma-kgr) _ ,,,_,. 

Membre, Zenobius (maN'-bra , zu -no -be -oo ) 

Menard (ma'-nar') , , , 

Mercier, Frangois le (m6r -ce -a ) 

Monseigneur (moN'-san'-yur') 

Montagnais (moN'-tan-ya') 

Montigny (moN'-ten'-ye') 

Moulins (moo-iaN') 

Narantsouak (nar'-ans'-wak') 

Norridgewock (n6r'-rij-w6k') 

Nicolet, Jean (ne'-ko'-la' san) 

Oushala (o'-sha'-la') 

Outagamies (o5'-ta'-gam'-ez ) 

Ouiantenon (we'-aN'-tii'-noN ) 

Pachot, FrauQOiS (pa'-sho', fran'-swa ) 

Perrot, Nicolas (pe'-ro') 

Pesticoui (p6s'-te'-kwee') , 

Petit, Jean (pu-te' or p'te') 

Pilette, Hypolite (pe-lef, e'po -let ) 

Pimiteoui (pe'me'-t6'-wee') , , j n 

Pinedo, Alvarez de (pin-ya'-da, al-va-r6th de) 

Pinet (pe'-na') 

Poisset (pwa'-sa'j 

Poiton (pwa'-tooO , ^ , ^ , -a 

Radisson, Pierre Esprit (ra'-de-soN', pe -gr 6s -pre } 

Rale, Sebastian (ral, sii-bas-te-aN') 

Reimes (reems, or raNs) 

Recollet (ra-cu-la') 

Ribourde, Gabriel (re-boor-d, ga -bre -61 ) 

Riverin (re-vu-raN') 

Riviere de Divine (re'-ve'-6r' da de -veil ) 

Rochelle (ru-shel') 

Rolland (ro'-laN') 

Rouensac (roo-aN-sak') 

St. Ange (saNt aNs) 

St. Cosme (saNt ktism, or sant kom) , ., -, 1^^ 

St. Denis Juchereau de (saN da-ne', or d ne, soo-shu -ro dO; 

St. Ignace (saxt ig-nas') 

Sault de Sainte Marie (soo saNt ma-re ) 



210 Starved Rock 

SauUeur (so-tGr') 

Seignelay (san'-yeh'-la') 

Sezanne (su'-zan') 

Sieur (se'-ur') 

Talon, Jean (ta-loN', saN) 

Tegankouki (tu'-giiN'-koo'-ke') 

Teissier (tas'-ya') 

Theakiki (ta-a-ke-ke') 

Thwaiies (twats) 

Tiane, Sieur de (teen se'-ur' du) 

Tonty (toN'-te) 

Toulouse (too-looz') 

Tourelle, Greysolon de la (too'-rel' gra'-e'-so'-loN') 

Tupin (too-paN') 

Vaudreuil, Marquis de (vo'-droy' mS,r-ke' du) 

Versailles (v6r-sa'-e) 

Villiers, Coulon de (ve'-le-a', koo-loN' dti') 

Xavier, Si. Francis (xS-ve-a', s^Nt fraN-swa') 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
II III I 

I'll 




016 095 178 3 



